What was the last fight to go more than 20 rounds?

Pinklon lost 5 out of 6 with a couple of layoffs of a year or longer starting with Tyson, then had what I think could fairly be called a last-gasp barnstorming tour of fights against nobodies (with maybe a journeyman or two thrown in) where he won 12 or 13 in a row in 1992 fighting like every few weeks. This was along that tour.

He had a fight the next night in a nearby town and somehow found our gym — can’t remember if they called us or just happened to pop in (this was a backyard gym and long before you could look up such things easily on a website, more word of mouth). I’m in my late 20s and just embarking on my training career (pretty sure I was just teaching my first amateur at this time).

Well, Pink and a handler (cannot remember his name, but someone he connected with after the glory days who was probably helping to fund this comeback tour with dreams of another title or at least title shot at the end of the rainbow, which never came when Thomas finally lost to a nondescript guy at the end of that tour and retired) walk in and I think it was just me and my amateur there. He wants to get in a shake-loose kind of workout, which he does, then asks if he can get a couple rounds of light sparring.

So I say, sure, I’ve probably got a round or two in me. I’m 5-8 1/2 and probably 170-175 pounds at the time. I’m a southpaw and I’ve watched Pinklon fight enough times to know the only way I survive is to take away his jab, so my whole strategy is to just use my right hand to neutralize his left.

That goes pretty well. We get to the last seconds of the first (and only) round and I block a jab and throw my right jab over it and — I remember this clearly to this day, can absolutely picture it — I hit him right in the left eye. He doesn’t blink or move in reaction to th punch so it’s literally leather on eyeball.

Now Pinklon blinks a couple of times and his expression changes, like a ‘ok now you wanna play’ type scowl. In a split second I go through some things — like oh ****, now I’ve done it, here he comes — and it’s fight or flight. I’m aware that the seconds are ticking down. And I’m very proud of this to this day that my instinct, however misguided, was to fight rather than try to avoid him til the bell rings.

So I load up the biggest left hand I can throw and uncork it. Pink leans to his right and the left misses. And he sinks a right hand counter to the body that absolutely caves me and a right over the top to my jaw. Bell rings. I’m done — not KO’d but that body shot took everything out of me and that right crashed hard, probably hardest I’ve ever been hit. So that’s that.

(I have two pictures of this, actual photographs that my amateur took — this is before phones were cameras — and they’re on my refrigerator to this day. One is of the body shot with me missing the left, haha. The other is me and Pink, who’s way taller, lol, afterward … today it would be a selfie).

He was as nice as could be. Asked if I was OK, thanked me for the sparring. We already knew about the fights the next night and were going so told him I’d see him there.

Well, I get to my car and my jaw has some kind of kink it in, like it’s on a broken hinge or something. Like I could feel it click every time I opened or closed it, but it’s really just very minor pain, not acute. That keeps up for about a month to six weeks and I finally decide iI must be broken and I need to see a doctor … and then just before I was going to do that it went away.

So that’s my Pinklon Thomas story. I want to be clear that if Pinklon had wanted to do so, he could have come out hard and ended me. It wasn’t balls-to-the-wall sparring until that last few seconds. I’m proud of myself for doing it and, mostly, proud of my instinct to ‘go to war’ when the stakes were raised rather than to try to survive (even though I paid a price).

I have nothing but great things to say about Pinklon. Super guy who gave me the experience of a lifetime. I hope he’s doing well.

 

They say his only issue was that he didn't tip. Other than that? Flawless.