Freddie Norwood, a former WBA featherweight champion, gave Dunkin more than a few discomfiting moments. So, too, did the courageous but tormented Diego Corrales, a onetime WBO super featherweight and WBC lightweight titlist who was legally drunk when he crashed his speeding motorcycle on May 7, 2007, and died at the scene.

But maybe no fighter who was a part of his managerial stable has so consistently exasperated Dunkin as Southwest Philadelphia junior middleweight Anthony "The Messenger" Thompson, who recently announced his retirement from boxing. Thompson exits with a 24-3 record that includes 18 victories inside the distance.

"I'm done," Thompson, 28, said a few days ago. "As far as I'm concerned, I don't think I'm ever going to fight again.

"I guess it just wasn't meant for it to be the way I wanted. But I can say that I'm happy with where I am in life. I feel free with this burden off me."

Thompson said he is through with boxing because of a chronic eye condition that caused him to fight "partially blind" for the past 3 years and fear that his vision would be permanently impaired if he continued his career.

Dunkin and Thompson's trainer, Derek "Bozy" Ennis, aren't buying it, alleging a lack of commitment was at the root of the fighter's history of pulling out of scheduled bouts, sometimes on short notice and usually without a plausible explanation.

This much is known: Thompson had signed a contract to take on Grady Brewer (26-11, 15 KOs) on Aug. 22 in Pala, Calif. Brewer handed the Philadelphian his first professional defeat, via a third-round stoppage, on Feb. 28, 2004, and Thompson had often said he wanted another shot at him to square accounts.

What followed in the days leading up to the rematch, however, is in dispute.

"Anthony took an advance [of $2,000 on his $15,000 purse], he signed a contract, he was showing up at the gym every day to train," said the Las Vegas-based Dunkin, who was voted Manager of the Year by the Boxing Writers Association of America for 2007.

"Then Bozy began calling me. He'd say, 'Anthony is complaining about his eyes, his ankles, his hand. He says he doesn't feel good. But what's really the matter is that he's scared to death of [Brewer]."

Thompson said, unbeknownst to Dunkin and Ennis, he had recently undergone laser eye surgery that had cleared up his vision problem, but he nonetheless decided the continuation of his boxing career posed too much of a risk.

"There's nothing more important than my eyesight," Thompson said.

Hard to argue with that, but it does pose a question: How had he passed all those eye exams mandated by various state athletic commissions these past 3 years?

"I was finding ways to get around it," Thompson said. "I had a cousin who also is named Anthony Thompson who was taking my eye tests for me. It was kind of like when Gypsy Joe Harris was fighting."

Harris, who was 44 when he died of heart failure on March 6, 1990, is the former welterweight contender from North Philly who posted a 24-1 record despite having lost the sight in his right eye in a street brawl when he was 11. Somehow, he was able to conceal that until he failed his final eye exam.

Thompson's history suggests he had other issues that kept his career from taking off as Dunkin and others had believed it would.

When Top Rank founder Bob Arum announced at an Aug. 6, 2003, news conference at the Wachovia Center that Thompson, whom he had just signed to a multifight contract, had "a chance to become the best fighter ever to come out of Philadelphia," it seemed like a huge leap of faith, even though Thompson was 11-0 at the time and had been proclaimed by undisputed middleweight champion Bernard Hopkins as "the next big deal in Philadelphia boxing."

But Top Rank's new acquisition frustrated his bosses because of his Hebrew Israelite beliefs, which prohibited him from boxing from sundown on Friday until Saturday night, and because of gastrointestinal issues that Thompson had not previously revealed.

In his first bout under the Top Rank banner, a fifth-round technical knockout of Dumont Welliver, Thompson vomited twice - before leaving the ring and immediately afterward. And, in the fight after that, a fourth-round stoppage of Sammy Sparkman, he skipped an ESPN2 postbout interview because he had to race to a restroom. Told these matters had plagued Thompson since he turned pro, Arum smiled grimly and said, "All I know is, if he can fight this well when he's sick, imagine what he can do when he's well."

Eventually, Top Rank got sick enough of Thompson to cut him loose, but Dunkin, who signed him to his first pro contract in 2001, continued to hang in, smitten as he was by "The Messenger's" impressive skills.

But Thompson's disappearing act before the Brewer rematch was the final straw for Dunkin and the first, and last, straw for Thompson's new promoter, Chris Middendorf.

"TKO [Middendorf's company] wishes him luck with his next career, and hopes that he finds one where truth is not a prerequisite," Middendorf said in a prepared statement.

Dunkin said he is out "$68,000 and years of my life" that he spent on Thompson, who he stuck with as long as he did because "he has so much talent that you keep hoping. He's a prima donna, but a nice kid. I really wanted him to make it."

So is Dunkin frustrated enough to also walk away from boxing? Apparently not; he just signed WBO junior welterweight champion Timothy Bradley to a managerial contract.

"When boxing is in your blood, it's hard to walk away from it," Dunkin said. "But it can break your heart sometimes." *

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