One hundred and twenty-four days have passed since super middleweight contender Lionell Thompson earned the biggest win of his boxing career, a unanimous decision over former 168-pound titleholder Jose Uzcategui. The 34-year-old’s victory in the opening bout of a Dec. 28 Showtime tripleheader headlined by Gervonta Davis and Yuriorkis Gamboa was a major upset, but Thompson said he hasn’t bothered to rewatch his triumphant performance since that Saturday night in Atlanta.

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Thompson has, however, carved out time to watch “The Equalizer,” a 2014 action flick starring Denzel Washington, 124 times since then.

“I watch it every single day,” Thompson told The Athletic. “I been doing it for years — like, I don’t even bother to count.”

There’s no way to verify this claim, but however many times Thompson has watched the movie, it has been enough for him to memorize every line of dialogue in the 131-minute film. Taking Thompson at his word, that means he has spent at least 3,766 hours — 157 days — viewing “The Equalizer” 1,725 times in the five-plus years since it was released on DVD. He has seen Denzel’s character slay the same 21 villains no fewer than 36,225 times, using his lethal training as a retired government assassin and an array of found objects like nail guns, corkscrews and hardcover books.

“The Equalizer” falls squarely into the “Taken” genre of modern action films, wherein an unassuming, middle-aged man in pleated khakis turns out to be among the world’s most skilled assassins. Washington’s version is Robert McCall, a solitary widower who faked his own death to escape the unspecified government agency he previously served and now works at a Boston Home Depot-like store. He suffers from insomnia and hyper-compulsive attention to detail that comes in handy when he needs to kill five armed henchmen in 19 seconds.

(Note: Spoiler alert in the following paragraph.)

McCall likes to help people better themselves, whether it’s aiding his co-worker Ralphie’s weight loss effort or encouraging a teenage Russian call girl named Alina to break free from her human trafficking captors and chase her dream of becoming a musician. When the pimps beat Alina so badly that she ends up in intensive care, McCall snaps and goes from doling out fortune cookie wisdom like “progress, not perfection” to hanging bad guys with barbed wire and power drilling their skulls. By film’s end, McCall has taken out the entire Russian organized crime syndicate, including Pushkin, the corrupt oligarch in charge, and Teddy, Pushkin’s most dangerous No. 2.

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When Thompson first saw “The Equalizer” in theaters, he was drawn to its clear moral message and gruesome style of vigilante justice.

“I just fell in love with the movie,” he said, citing parallels to a youth spent cycling out of the foster care system in “Rough Buff,” Buffalo, N.Y., and the challenges he’s faced throughout his 11-year career in boxing.

“I love that he ironed out the wrinkles in people’s lives. He’s righting the wrongs for the people who don’t have a voice. Me being somebody who was bullied as a kid, I just like it because the good finally wins,” Thompson added. “Even in the boxing world, I always been the B-side, always the opponent. We live in such a corrupt world and so many unfair things happen. Sometimes it’ll be the people that live to ruin others that get the best situation. In the movie, I like that the wicked suffer and the righteous prosper. He took on the kings of the world and he broke them all.”

During the film’s 2014 theatrical run, Thompson, who lives in Las Vegas, went to see screenings of “The Equalizer” every weekend.

“My girlfriend at the time was like, ‘what we gonna see?’” he recalled. “I’m like, ‘I’m going to Equalizer again. If you don’t wanna go, I don’t know what you’re going to see.’”

Once the DVD came out, Thompson began his nightly ritual and the relationship was doomed. “I really think that’s why she left me,” he said. “I don’t care — she could leave because ‘The Equalizer’ ain’t going nowhere.”

Ever since, Thompson, now single, has kept the same routine. He wakes up, prays, eats breakfast, trains, comes home, sleeps, wakes up and runs.

After five miles of early evening road work, Thompson hits the convenience store for a gallon of water and a bag of Haribo gummi bears.

“I already have the movie in my DVD player, and I got it on DVR in case my DVD gets scratched,” he said. “So as soon as I get home and take my shower, I relax, pop it on and press play. I can’t go to sleep until the last scene is off.”

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Thompson has nothing against 2018’s “The Equalizer 2” or the original 1980s TV series, but on an everyday basis, he remains loyal to Denzel’s first “Equalizer.”

This has been Thompson’s existence, every day, for the last five years. Except for when Mayweather Promotions calls with the name of his next opponent and Thompson begins a training camp.

“When I got a fight,” he said, “I watch it two times a day.”

Boxing lore is rich with tales of fighters’ eccentricities and superstitions: Manny Pacquiao’s preference for having his buddies sleep at the foot of his bed; Juan Manuel Marquez’s dalliance with drinking his own urine; Victor Ortiz’s hawking of a self-branded line of “FaceLube” and referring to himself as “literally, a tree.”

Yet somehow — and this doesn’t seem fair — none of this seems crazier than Thompson’s obsession with watching the same Denzel Washington movie over and over again. Not even Mike Tyson vowing to eat Lennox Lewis’ children!

But a fighter’s mentality doesn’t need to make sense to anyone but himself, and if Thompson’s win over Uzcategui is any indication, then the motivation he derives from “The Equalizer” must be worth something. After nearly 2,000 viewings of the film, it’s as if Thompson’s world view and the themes of “The Equalizer” have become inseparable. He can draw parallels between nearly every aspect of his life and career with lines, scenes and characters from the movie.

“The Equalizer is my alter ego,” Thompson said, describing his outlook as a B-side opponent. “When I fight, I turn into him. It puts me in that fearless mindset: I don’t care who you put in front of me. I’m the man that’s walking in the room, who don’t have a lot of money, who don’t have the politics behind me, who was overlooked, but I’m the most dangerous person that you’re probably ever gonna meet. He got all the judges on his side, but I’m the equalizer. That’s how I look at myself when I step in that ring.”

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Late last year, when Thompson was offered the Uzcategui fight, he broke down the situation in his head like it was one of the slow-motion scenes from the movie where McCall notes every detail he’ll need to fight a room full of enemies.

“I got two weeks’ notice,” Thompson recalled. “No training expense money, no (money to pay) sparring partners.”

To make the 168-pound weight limit, Thompson would need to shed 22 pounds in a fortnight. “This ain’t no title eliminator, how come we can’t do a catchweight of 171?” he said. “They’re trying to suck me down in weight, hoping I’ll be weak.”

A career light heavyweight, Thompson had long planned to drop down one division, but no fighter with better options would have agreed to attempt the cut on short notice and make his super middleweight debut against a recent ex-champion like Uzcategui.

There was nothing unusual about the scenario — the opportunity on the table for Thompson was what the boxing business lovingly refers to as the art of matchmaking. Uzcategui, one fight removed from losing his belt to Caleb Plant, was beginning to step back up in competition after knocking out 10-9-1 Roberto Valdez in a comeback bout. Thompson came in with the reputation of a skilled boxer who was better than his 21-5 record and whose defense and lateral movement could help Uzcategui log some competitive rounds.

Between the comparative lack of resources Thompson faced heading into the Uzcategui bout and Thompson’s history of coming up short in step-up opportunities, online sportsbooks saw the Venezuelan former belt-holder as a -1,000 favorite.

Of course, from a B-side fighter’s point-of-view, the art of matchmaking looks more like a stacked deck.

“It’s not set up for me to win,” Thompson said. “Basically, they’re telling me, ‘Yo, we want you to build this house.’ I say, ‘Where’s the stuff to build it?’ and you say, ‘I’m not giving it to you, just find a way.’”

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But Thompson, accustomed to matchmakers’ games by this point in his career, said he strives to remain in near-fighting shape year-round so that when he gets the call on short notice he’ll still be able to enter the ring with confidence. For Uzcategui, he even spent extra on a nutritionist to help him make weight comfortably. Looking back on the fight, a Denzel reference once again proved handy.

“This is why I stay ready,” Thompson said. “The equalizer is a trained assassin, always ready at the drop of a dime.”

On fight night, Thompson continued to note the similarities between his circumstances and Denzel’s cinematic exploits. As Thompson headed to the ring, he visualized a scene where five Russian gangsters underestimate McCall moments before he starts slicing their throats and plunging broken bottles into their eyes.

“They think they’re untouchable,” he said. “And here comes this little black man who don’t look like nothing walking into the room, and they have no idea what’s about to happen. That’s how I felt entering the boxing arena. Everybody looking at me like who’s this bum, 22 and 5, never heard of him, blah blah blah. And they have no idea how good I am.”

Later, Thompson set up a 1-2 combination in the closing seconds of the first round that dropped Uzcategui, Thompson’s straight right hammering home a message that tonight’s B-side had shown up to win. As Uzcategui climbed to his feet, smiling as if he couldn’t believe what had happened, Thompson said another image from the film flashed through his head: The disbelief in the dying eyes of a gang enforcer who’d been mocking Denzel in Russian, after he’d been stabbed with corkscrews and Denzel said, in Russian, “Understand?”

.@LonnieBthegreat drops @JoseBolivitaU as round one comes to a close. #UzcateguiThompson

— SHOWTIME Boxing (@ShowtimeBoxing) December 29, 2019

By fight’s end, Thompson had survived the bad omen of ring announcer Jimmy Lennon Jr. introducing him as “Lionell Davis” before the opening bell; he had persevered through the farcical refereeing of George Chip, who warned Uzcategui for holding in Round 4 and then immediately deducted a point from Thompson — who hadn’t been holding — for the same foul; and he boxed well enough to repel Uzcategui’s late-round surge, despite breaking a knuckle and tearing the labrum in his left shoulder in the middle rounds.

Once the scores were read and Thompson had notched a career-best win, his mind drifted back to “The Equalizer.” This time, he thought of a scene where Denzel confronts Teddy, the Russian underboss, in a restaurant after killing one of Teddy’s goons in the men’s room.

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“He steps to the guy and says, ‘You have enough? Because I can keep going. Brick by brick, dollar by dollar, body by body,’” Thompson said. “With Uzcategui, everybody thought I was getting knocked out. So when I beat the guy, that was my message to them: I can keep going. Fight by fight, win by win, champion by champion.”

It’s not hard to see that Thompson’s devotion to “The Equalizer” is intertwined with his grievances toward the fight game. In conversation, he often refers to boxing’s financial power brokers — the promoters, managers and broadcast platforms — as “Pushkins,” akin to the film’s crime boss. Any opponent Thompson faces in the ring becomes a “Teddy,” a powerful adversary sent by the Pushkins to erase his dreams. “Even some of the people you work for will be Pushkins and Teddys,” he said.

Thompson snarls at the common practice of maneuvering blue-chip prospects carefully as they start their careers.

“Some of these managers and promoters, they’ll say, ‘we’re building a star,’” he said. “What the fuck do that mean? It sounds like they’re playing with Legos. Like they put a whole bunch of fighters in a room and just pick the one they want to be a star. It isn’t the best fighter that comes out as a star. No, it’s ‘we like this guy for whatever reason, so we’re gonna line up a whole bunch of bums, pay him all this money, lie to the public, and hopefully, one day, he becomes the thing that we said he was.”

For all the disadvantages that come with being considered a veteran opponent, Thompson relishes the opportunity to play spoiler, whether it means derailing Uzcategui’s comeback or handing a prospect like Earl Newman his first loss. “I live to see the expression on people’s faces when the underdog’s on top,” he said. “I’m winning for all the opponents out there, to show them: Man, fuck these A-sides. Don’t believe the hype.”

Thompson carries his five career losses — more than almost any other contender aspiring to compete at a world-class level — like a badge of honor.

“The difference between me and those guys is that they won 20 fights they were expected to win, and I won 22 fights I was expected to lose,” Thompson said. “These guys got support. Strength trainers, private nutritionists — they got teams. I’ve got this far in my career by just taking fights on short notice and always staying in shape, not knowing when I’m (going to get) a fight. It’s just me.”

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Thompson’s disillusionment is understandable. He’s had some rotten breaks, including three split-decision losses to fighters he believed were better connected than him and multiple bouts marred by dubious refereeing. He’s never earned more than five figures for a fight — not even last December on Showtime. When Thompson returned to Vegas after beating Uzcategui, fellow boxers at the Mayweather Boxing Club congratulated him: “You finally got six figures!” and “I know you made at least 100.” Thompson said that when he told them he received a check for $39,000, his friends said, “man, that’s a shame.”

The danger of taking such fierce pride in being one of boxing’s B-sides and underdogs is that it opens the door for Thompson to blame his shortcomings on external factors. Thompson is prone to occasional musings about fairness and deserving more from the sport, but believing too strongly in right and wrong is like begging for heartbreak in boxing’s amoral landscape. If Thompson’s identity as a fighter revolves around the notion that the game is rigged against athletes in his position, then every loss can be partly attributed to unseen Pushkins and Teddys.

Earlier in his career, Thompson struggled to stay on the right side of the fine line between carrying a motivational chip on his shoulder and falling into woe-is-me defeatism, according to his former promoter. Jolene Mizzone, head matchmaker for Main Events, signed Thompson in 2013 before granting his request for a release prior to his first fight under Mayweather Promotions in October 2015.

“He always had a lot of talent,” Mizzone recalled. “But he could be his own worst enemy, sometimes making excuses, playing the blame game, you know? I think he put too much pressure on himself and he let that beat him up for a while. One of the biggest downfalls with a lot of fighters is being in gyms with other fighters and comparing themselves. You’re looking and you’re seeing what they’re getting — money, attention — and it’s hard. You gotta have the right mental to focus and block everybody out.

“Once a fighter says ‘Sergey Kovalev gets this’ or ‘Curtis Stevens got that’ to me, I know their mental is not there,” Mizzone continued. “I get it — I understand they’re human — but you gotta focus on yourself, to make yourself better.”

Thompson’s breakthrough may not have come under Main Events’ watch, but Mizzone said his win over Uzcategui showed that he must have overcome whatever issues were holding him back. There’s no telling precisely how Thompson got there, but beating an ex-champion less than a year removed from holding a title lends credence to a belief that Thompson has held for years: “That I’m a world-champion caliber fighter, just not on the right side of the politics.”

Maybe he matured with age; maybe his skill and ring intelligence continued to grow through years of experience; maybe his fanatical commitment to watching Denzel Washington slaughter Russian hoodlums keeps Thompson grounded and helps him channel his bitterness toward the business of boxing into a productive, mean-edged hunger to prove that the Pushkins who underrated him for all these years were wrong.

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Oddly enough, the one fighter who Thompson would never call a Teddy or a Pushkin might be the easiest to typecast as the lead villain in “Equalizer 3”: unified light heavyweight champion Artur Beterbiev. Thompson has been a regular sparring partner of Beterbiev’s for years, and he warmly calls the Russian 175-pounder “the baddest man on the planet.”

“He’s like my idol,” Thompson gushed. “The best I’ve ever been in the ring with, and the person I imagine myself being as a fighter. He used to call me up, fly me to Montreal; we’d spar three days a week. That man is not somebody you jump into the ring with for shits and giggles. I’ve never been hit that hard in my life, and I’ve been hit with weapons. He can physically change you on an accident — not even meaning to, on an accident.

“It was an honor working as his sparring partner for like the last five or six years,” Thompson continued. “And I’m man enough to say he kicked my ass — all the time. I call him my big brother.”

Thompson said Beterbiev helped him improve his body punching and his control of distance, but more than anything else, he said that knowing Beterbiev kept summoning him back for training boosted his confidence. Maybe Thompson couldn’t beat Beterbiev, but he was competitive enough in sparring to like his chances against super middleweight belt-holders one division below.

And thanks to his win over Uzcategui, Thompson may actually get a title shot against PBC’s other top 168-pounders. Before COVID-19 forced the world into lockdown, Thompson was rumored to be on the shortlist of potential next opponents for David Benavidez. If that doesn’t materialize, he’ll shift his attention to Plant. Either way, it appears as if Thompson won’t have to worry about being a five-figure fighter much longer.

And if a shot at a championship comes, Thompson already has plans to change his nickname.

“Usually I have ‘Lonnie B’ on my shorts,” he said, referring to the shorthand he developed in childhood with his three brothers, all of whom share the name, Lionell Thompson.

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“But when I fight for the title, it’s gonna be ‘The Equalizer.’”

(Top photo: Christian Petersen / Getty Images)