BoxRec

Former local boxing champ Rocky Lockridge to be featured on A&E show about addiction

Six months ago, home for Rocky Lockridge was a sidewalk in Camden.

Today, the former world junior lightweight boxing champion, who is recovering from a crack and alcohol addiction, is sober and has a budding relationship with the sons he went 15 years without seeing.

Lockridge, who lived in Paterson and Mount Laurel when he was a boxer and often fought at Ice World in Totowa, will be the focus of the Emmy Award-winning show “Intervention” tonight at 9 on A&E.

The weekly drama focuses on addicts. “Intervention” producers tell them they will be part of a documentary on addiction and follow them with a camera crew for weeks. The addict is then surprised by an intervention, during which friends and relatives ask them to accept help in overcoming their problems. If the addict accepts, the show pays for a recovery program at a rehabilitation center.

Lockridge, who won world championships in 1984 and ’87, was admitted to the Palmetto Addiction Recovery Center in Rayville, La., where he spent three months as a patient. He was released Feb. 8.

“I’m cleaner now than I ever was, even during my time in the fight game,” Lockridge said from Monroe, La., where he is staying with a sympathetic family. “The show and my rehabilitation went sensationally well.

“If I had not had a stroke I might get me another title shot, as good as I feel.”