He was a college football star, studied martial arts, and was three times city wrestling champion. He won a scholarship to Prairie View A&M University in Texas, but was thrown out after a year. After that he went to a couple of little colleges in Chicago, always on an athletic scholarship. When he left college, Mr. T was a military policeman in the US Army. After that, he was invited to try out for the Green Bay Packers, but a knee injury finished his professional football career.

He then became a 'minder', and remained largely in that profession for about nine years. He has bodyguarded such stars as Muhammed Ali, Leon Spinks, Michael Jackson, Steve McQueen, Diana Ross and LeVar Burton. He charged about $3,000 a day (more for 'special' jobs) and his business card reads, 'Next to God, there is no better protector than I'. He boasts that he never lost a client. Of the job he says, "I got hurt worse growing up in the ghetto than working as a bodyguard."

He believed in having a very professional attitude toward the job, preventing trouble from even starting rather than having to sort it out once it had. "I was a very dapper dresser," he recalls.