Life is a great grand canvas, and Thomas believes that you
should throw all the paint on it you can. “Something will stick,” he
says…
At this point in his life, Pinklon Thomas may enjoy himself and
relax. He has been battling environment or circumstances or people ever
since he could walk; certainly he’s entitled to savor the present.
Not many boxers can boast as Thomas can of devouring the delicious taste of achievement in the form of the world heavyweight champion. And far fewer of them confronted a hopeless, severe case of substance addiction and surfaced victorious. Indeed, if there is one thing Thomas has learned along the way it is that life is redemptive—it’s just not easy.
“I’m excited about all the great things happening in my life right now,” says Thomas, 55, living near Orlando, Florida.
Thomas has no deterrents holding him back. At several times along the road, he found his life more than a bit off course, the sorriest points included committing robbery to support a voracious heroin addiction.
“I don’t want to take the bad with me or carry it,” says Thomas, noted for his sartorial splendor of pink boots and ring trunks and a terrific left jab. “I share it. I turned the bad into something good. I share and give my knowledge, or if you want to call it my blessing. If you don’t sow anything, you don’t reap anything. When I see alcohol now, I look past it. But I’m still smart enough to take it all one day at time.”
Søren Kierkegaard once said, “Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living.” As Thomas can attest, those forces can be exacerbated by a dangerous mixture of environment and upbringing. A product of the harshest streets of Pontiac, Michigan, Thomas first experimented with heroin at 12, and he had a nasty habit when he was 14. His early life was a terrible ordeal of survival—street fights, crime, drugs, alcohol, pills. Most of the guys he associated with back then are either dead or in jail.
When he was 17 he married, and within a year he and his wife—an army enlistee—were living in Fort Lewis, Washington. At age 19, a friend directed him to the local gym to meet with a trainer, who put Thomas—high on heroin and speed at the time—in the ring with a fighter named Big Ben. After two rounds, an exhausted Thomas was handed the thumping of his life— one so extraordinary that it motivated him to learn how to box.
Thomas began to run to the point of physical sickness. He temporarily abandoned the drugs. Within six months, he had exacted his revenge on Big Ben.
After three amateur fights, Thomas turned pro, in August of 1978. His first spotlight bout came in January 1983 when he held South African Gerrie Coetzee to a draw. Thomas triumphed four more times and had climbed the rankings when Don King offered him the fight against WBC heavyweight champion Tim Witherspoon.
“There is no way to speak about where I come from and where I’ve been without mentioning Don King,” says Thomas. “If it weren’t for Don King, I wouldn’t be a contender or a champion. Before the [Bruce Grandham] fight in Puerto Rico, King told me that if I won that fight, I was in line for a championship fight. He held his end. Sincerely speaking, I truly love him. He gave me the opportunity and I took advantage of it. Nobody else would give me the opportunity that he gave me.”
August 31, 1984, Thomas Defeats Witherspoon
Pinklon Thomas used a cutting left jab to keep Tim Witherspoon perplexed and score a majority 12-round decision to capture the title. Thomas was favored on two of the ringside judges’ cards, while the other judge had the fight even.
The undefeated Thomas (24-0-1, 20 KOs) scored points with the left jab he repeatedly snapped in Witherspoon’s face as the champion battled without luck to fight inside.
Thomas was able to control the early rounds but Witherspoon (18-1) became more aggressive after the middle rounds.
In a bout marked by extended periods of inactivity, Thomas seemed content to use his jab to amass points. Witherspoon, at 217 pounds, tried several times to get inside, but Thomas, who weighed 211, would back off and hold off the champion with jabs. The type of jabbing that led some boxing analysts to suggest that Thomas had the best left jab of any heavyweight since Sonny Liston.
“One of the announcers, I think it was Larry Merchant,” says Thomas, “he said that Witherspoon looked like a rag doll with a bobbing head. That jab was my solid weapon. I still work out and I still work that jab. I still work out and spar and hit the machines. My body is still chiseled and I hope it stays it way.”
Referee Richard Steele admonished Witherspoon three times for hitting Thomas with the back of his glove and once for a low blow. Except for the seventh round, when both fighters landed hard head shots and swapped leather for the final minute of the round, neither fighter was able to land crisply or injure the other.
“You know, that is a great moment in my life,” says Thomas. “All the time, the effort, and the energy, all of the broken hands (he broke both of his hands in his second fight with Jerry Williams, in 1982), and contract disputes, all of the training over and over again—it was all worth it. I had five and a half years of contract disputes, of injuries, suspensions, and setbacks, and to win that fight, what else more can you ask for? It really comes down to how bad do you want it. Dreams will come true if you pursue them. There is no sense of dreaming dreams if you don’t try to make them come true, right?”
Upon winning the crown, Thomas talked about unifying the splintered heavyweight division: Gerrie Coetzee held the WBA crown; Larry Holmes the IBF championship. He never achieved that vision, losing the belt to Trevor Berbick in his second title defense. He did, however, provide the heavyweight division with one of its most memorable one-punch knockouts in the modern era.
Wicked Right vs. Mike Weaver
It was the jab that won the day as Thomas seized the title from Witherspoon, and it was the jab that established him as a 2-1 favorite over Mike “Hercules” Weaver on June 15, 1985, at the Riviera Hotel, in Las Vegas.
Leading up to the bout, not a single person, not even Weaver, 33, who from March 1980 until December 1982, was the WBA heavyweight champion, alluded to the right hand.
Just a little over two minutes into the first round, Thomas’s right hand met the head of Weaver. Weaver was stunned, and Thomas let loose a flood of arm punches and a hatchet-like right that dropped the challenger.
In the eighth round, Thomas sensed that Weaver was wearying. He caught Weaver with hard jabs, and baited him with short ones. Then, in a flash, the champion’s right landed with violent clout. The high punch slanted and crashed against Weaver’s left temple.
“Well, I hit him solid,” says Thomas. “I hit him solid, and that was it. He couldn’t stand back up, it was a good shot.”
After the unanimous decision title loss to Berbick in his next bout, Thomas put together a string of three knockouts before challenging Mike Tyson, May 30, 1987, for the WBC and WBA heavyweight titles.
Thomas had suffered a shoulder injury prior to the fight, and he says that he felt the effects of that injury throughout the bout.
“My shoulder popped out in training,” says Thomas. “I was told to stay off of it, and Angelo Dundee tried to get me to pull out. When I got to Vegas, when I hit the speed bag or the heavy bag, I could tell that my shoulder was shot.”
Although Tyson was the 5-1 favorite, Thomas was expected to be a tough test. At 29, the ex-champion still had his punch, his legs, his savvy experience, and a stiff, hard jab.
“Mike was killing guys,” says Thomas. “He was knocking them dead. But I wanted to see how he handled the experience. He was fighting lower class fighters and I wasn’t afraid of him.”
In the first round Thomas was rocked by right-left combinations to the body and head and suffered puffiness around both eyes. But Thomas survived that first round, and he says he began to find his comfort level. Pretty soon, Thomas’s ring experience had stymied Tyson.
“Before the fight,” says Thomas, “I told Don King I was going to stick and move and beat him. Come the second round, he couldn’t catch me with nothing. I was tying him up, walking him backwards. I used my good experience and good stiff jabs, and I was wearing him out. I had a good jab going. But I couldn’t finish him. In the third round and the fourth round and fifth, too, I was getting going.”
In the third, Tyson butted, clinched, and showed frustration. Commentator Larry Merchant scored the round for Thomas, and claimed that Thomas controlled the fourth and fifth. Throughout round five, Thomas beat Tyson to the punch, and snapped off faster with his jab.
“At the end of the fifth, I thought I had him. I even told Mike after the fifth that I had some bad intentions for him. But my glove split and that cost me the fight. Right now, it’s in the records. But both me and Mike know where this fight was headed.”
By the sixth round, Thomas had exposed some of Tyson’s defects —a soft jab, a failure to break from a clinch or adjust to his opponent’s lateral movements.
Right at the point in which Thomas felt as if he was beginning to wrest the momentum and take control, Tyson finished off him off with a slew of left hooks and vicious rights. Thomas was out at 2:00 of the sixth. Dundee stepped in at the count of nine.
“I got hit with a shot, my shoulder dropped, and then came a bunch of unanswered punches,” says Thomas. “I got up; I didn’t want to be counted out. Tyson said afterwards that I was the second baddest man on the planet.”
The remainder of Thomas’s career revolved around retirement followed up by his succumbing to the lure of false hope and legitimate paydays. Losses to Evander Holyfield, Riddick Bowe and Tommy Morrison followed. Personal demons still haunted him.
Weeks after he lost to Evander Holyfield—sometime around February 1989—Thomas found himself on a bar stool in Miami in the early morning hours. Slovenly and unshaven, he had been binging on cocaine and other drugs and swigging booze for consecutive five days. He had dropped 13 pounds, and had neglected his personal hygiene; he had been wearing the same clothes for just about one week straight.
“That was it for me,” says Thomas. “I decided to become one-hundred percent clean. I’ve been one-hundred percent clean since February 10, 1989. Every February 10, which is my birthday, I celebrate. There is no shame in my game.”
Project P.I.N.K.
Life is a great grand canvas, and Pinklon Thomas believes that you should throw all the paint on it you can. “Something will stick,” he says. “For me, boxing is over and done. Great opportunities are sitting in front of me, including a documentary coming soon. I have the love of my father and family.
And I’m putting a lot into the things that I have, my wisdom, knowledge and understanding.”
Thomas dedicates much of his time motivating teens and at-risk youth; he founded Project P.I.N.K. (an acronym for Pride In Neighborhood Kids) as an outlet to foster youth mentorship. Thomas emphasizes shunning drugs and peer pressure, as well as the importance of setting goals and responding to mistakes and difficulties in life with aplomb and faith.
“I like to give back,” says Thomas. “I urge students to stay in school, to stay away from drugs and find the determination to follow a dream. The youth of today is our tomorrow.”
Thomas says he feels as well physically at this moment as he has had at any juncture in his life.
“I’m strong,” says Thomas. “I’ve got abs again, I mean, I can’t go out on the motivational circuit looking like a pig.”
And, in typically entertaining Pinklonian fashion, he can’t resist tossing one final parting barb at his former nemesis and divisional counterpart Larry Holmes.
“When that big peanut head Larry Holmes is out there talking, he looks like a big pig. I look like I’m ready to fight.”
Not many boxers can boast as Thomas can of devouring the delicious taste of achievement in the form of the world heavyweight champion. And far fewer of them confronted a hopeless, severe case of substance addiction and surfaced victorious. Indeed, if there is one thing Thomas has learned along the way it is that life is redemptive—it’s just not easy.
“I’m excited about all the great things happening in my life right now,” says Thomas, 55, living near Orlando, Florida.
Thomas has no deterrents holding him back. At several times along the road, he found his life more than a bit off course, the sorriest points included committing robbery to support a voracious heroin addiction.
“I don’t want to take the bad with me or carry it,” says Thomas, noted for his sartorial splendor of pink boots and ring trunks and a terrific left jab. “I share it. I turned the bad into something good. I share and give my knowledge, or if you want to call it my blessing. If you don’t sow anything, you don’t reap anything. When I see alcohol now, I look past it. But I’m still smart enough to take it all one day at time.”
Søren Kierkegaard once said, “Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living.” As Thomas can attest, those forces can be exacerbated by a dangerous mixture of environment and upbringing. A product of the harshest streets of Pontiac, Michigan, Thomas first experimented with heroin at 12, and he had a nasty habit when he was 14. His early life was a terrible ordeal of survival—street fights, crime, drugs, alcohol, pills. Most of the guys he associated with back then are either dead or in jail.
When he was 17 he married, and within a year he and his wife—an army enlistee—were living in Fort Lewis, Washington. At age 19, a friend directed him to the local gym to meet with a trainer, who put Thomas—high on heroin and speed at the time—in the ring with a fighter named Big Ben. After two rounds, an exhausted Thomas was handed the thumping of his life— one so extraordinary that it motivated him to learn how to box.
Thomas began to run to the point of physical sickness. He temporarily abandoned the drugs. Within six months, he had exacted his revenge on Big Ben.
After three amateur fights, Thomas turned pro, in August of 1978. His first spotlight bout came in January 1983 when he held South African Gerrie Coetzee to a draw. Thomas triumphed four more times and had climbed the rankings when Don King offered him the fight against WBC heavyweight champion Tim Witherspoon.
“There is no way to speak about where I come from and where I’ve been without mentioning Don King,” says Thomas. “If it weren’t for Don King, I wouldn’t be a contender or a champion. Before the [Bruce Grandham] fight in Puerto Rico, King told me that if I won that fight, I was in line for a championship fight. He held his end. Sincerely speaking, I truly love him. He gave me the opportunity and I took advantage of it. Nobody else would give me the opportunity that he gave me.”
August 31, 1984, Thomas Defeats Witherspoon
Pinklon Thomas used a cutting left jab to keep Tim Witherspoon perplexed and score a majority 12-round decision to capture the title. Thomas was favored on two of the ringside judges’ cards, while the other judge had the fight even.
The undefeated Thomas (24-0-1, 20 KOs) scored points with the left jab he repeatedly snapped in Witherspoon’s face as the champion battled without luck to fight inside.
Thomas was able to control the early rounds but Witherspoon (18-1) became more aggressive after the middle rounds.
In a bout marked by extended periods of inactivity, Thomas seemed content to use his jab to amass points. Witherspoon, at 217 pounds, tried several times to get inside, but Thomas, who weighed 211, would back off and hold off the champion with jabs. The type of jabbing that led some boxing analysts to suggest that Thomas had the best left jab of any heavyweight since Sonny Liston.
“One of the announcers, I think it was Larry Merchant,” says Thomas, “he said that Witherspoon looked like a rag doll with a bobbing head. That jab was my solid weapon. I still work out and I still work that jab. I still work out and spar and hit the machines. My body is still chiseled and I hope it stays it way.”
Referee Richard Steele admonished Witherspoon three times for hitting Thomas with the back of his glove and once for a low blow. Except for the seventh round, when both fighters landed hard head shots and swapped leather for the final minute of the round, neither fighter was able to land crisply or injure the other.
“You know, that is a great moment in my life,” says Thomas. “All the time, the effort, and the energy, all of the broken hands (he broke both of his hands in his second fight with Jerry Williams, in 1982), and contract disputes, all of the training over and over again—it was all worth it. I had five and a half years of contract disputes, of injuries, suspensions, and setbacks, and to win that fight, what else more can you ask for? It really comes down to how bad do you want it. Dreams will come true if you pursue them. There is no sense of dreaming dreams if you don’t try to make them come true, right?”
Upon winning the crown, Thomas talked about unifying the splintered heavyweight division: Gerrie Coetzee held the WBA crown; Larry Holmes the IBF championship. He never achieved that vision, losing the belt to Trevor Berbick in his second title defense. He did, however, provide the heavyweight division with one of its most memorable one-punch knockouts in the modern era.
Wicked Right vs. Mike Weaver
It was the jab that won the day as Thomas seized the title from Witherspoon, and it was the jab that established him as a 2-1 favorite over Mike “Hercules” Weaver on June 15, 1985, at the Riviera Hotel, in Las Vegas.
Leading up to the bout, not a single person, not even Weaver, 33, who from March 1980 until December 1982, was the WBA heavyweight champion, alluded to the right hand.
Just a little over two minutes into the first round, Thomas’s right hand met the head of Weaver. Weaver was stunned, and Thomas let loose a flood of arm punches and a hatchet-like right that dropped the challenger.
In the eighth round, Thomas sensed that Weaver was wearying. He caught Weaver with hard jabs, and baited him with short ones. Then, in a flash, the champion’s right landed with violent clout. The high punch slanted and crashed against Weaver’s left temple.
“Well, I hit him solid,” says Thomas. “I hit him solid, and that was it. He couldn’t stand back up, it was a good shot.”
After the unanimous decision title loss to Berbick in his next bout, Thomas put together a string of three knockouts before challenging Mike Tyson, May 30, 1987, for the WBC and WBA heavyweight titles.
Thomas had suffered a shoulder injury prior to the fight, and he says that he felt the effects of that injury throughout the bout.
“My shoulder popped out in training,” says Thomas. “I was told to stay off of it, and Angelo Dundee tried to get me to pull out. When I got to Vegas, when I hit the speed bag or the heavy bag, I could tell that my shoulder was shot.”
Although Tyson was the 5-1 favorite, Thomas was expected to be a tough test. At 29, the ex-champion still had his punch, his legs, his savvy experience, and a stiff, hard jab.
“Mike was killing guys,” says Thomas. “He was knocking them dead. But I wanted to see how he handled the experience. He was fighting lower class fighters and I wasn’t afraid of him.”
In the first round Thomas was rocked by right-left combinations to the body and head and suffered puffiness around both eyes. But Thomas survived that first round, and he says he began to find his comfort level. Pretty soon, Thomas’s ring experience had stymied Tyson.
“Before the fight,” says Thomas, “I told Don King I was going to stick and move and beat him. Come the second round, he couldn’t catch me with nothing. I was tying him up, walking him backwards. I used my good experience and good stiff jabs, and I was wearing him out. I had a good jab going. But I couldn’t finish him. In the third round and the fourth round and fifth, too, I was getting going.”
In the third, Tyson butted, clinched, and showed frustration. Commentator Larry Merchant scored the round for Thomas, and claimed that Thomas controlled the fourth and fifth. Throughout round five, Thomas beat Tyson to the punch, and snapped off faster with his jab.
“At the end of the fifth, I thought I had him. I even told Mike after the fifth that I had some bad intentions for him. But my glove split and that cost me the fight. Right now, it’s in the records. But both me and Mike know where this fight was headed.”
By the sixth round, Thomas had exposed some of Tyson’s defects —a soft jab, a failure to break from a clinch or adjust to his opponent’s lateral movements.
Right at the point in which Thomas felt as if he was beginning to wrest the momentum and take control, Tyson finished off him off with a slew of left hooks and vicious rights. Thomas was out at 2:00 of the sixth. Dundee stepped in at the count of nine.
“I got hit with a shot, my shoulder dropped, and then came a bunch of unanswered punches,” says Thomas. “I got up; I didn’t want to be counted out. Tyson said afterwards that I was the second baddest man on the planet.”
The remainder of Thomas’s career revolved around retirement followed up by his succumbing to the lure of false hope and legitimate paydays. Losses to Evander Holyfield, Riddick Bowe and Tommy Morrison followed. Personal demons still haunted him.
Weeks after he lost to Evander Holyfield—sometime around February 1989—Thomas found himself on a bar stool in Miami in the early morning hours. Slovenly and unshaven, he had been binging on cocaine and other drugs and swigging booze for consecutive five days. He had dropped 13 pounds, and had neglected his personal hygiene; he had been wearing the same clothes for just about one week straight.
“That was it for me,” says Thomas. “I decided to become one-hundred percent clean. I’ve been one-hundred percent clean since February 10, 1989. Every February 10, which is my birthday, I celebrate. There is no shame in my game.”
Project P.I.N.K.
Life is a great grand canvas, and Pinklon Thomas believes that you should throw all the paint on it you can. “Something will stick,” he says. “For me, boxing is over and done. Great opportunities are sitting in front of me, including a documentary coming soon. I have the love of my father and family.
And I’m putting a lot into the things that I have, my wisdom, knowledge and understanding.”
Thomas dedicates much of his time motivating teens and at-risk youth; he founded Project P.I.N.K. (an acronym for Pride In Neighborhood Kids) as an outlet to foster youth mentorship. Thomas emphasizes shunning drugs and peer pressure, as well as the importance of setting goals and responding to mistakes and difficulties in life with aplomb and faith.
“I like to give back,” says Thomas. “I urge students to stay in school, to stay away from drugs and find the determination to follow a dream. The youth of today is our tomorrow.”
Thomas says he feels as well physically at this moment as he has had at any juncture in his life.
“I’m strong,” says Thomas. “I’ve got abs again, I mean, I can’t go out on the motivational circuit looking like a pig.”
And, in typically entertaining Pinklonian fashion, he can’t resist tossing one final parting barb at his former nemesis and divisional counterpart Larry Holmes.
“When that big peanut head Larry Holmes is out there talking, he looks like a big pig. I look like I’m ready to fight.”
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