Glencoffe Johnson? Fighter of the Year?

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. Not for Johnson, a beefed-up former middleweight who assumed the moniker of “Road Warrior” after trekking to faraway lands like Germany and Italy to provide sturdy, cheap opposition for young up-and-comers.

When the holiday season came around last year, Johnson was swinging a hammer around a North Miami construction site as a carpenter, building roofs and crafting cement molds. On the dark side of 35 and far past his fighting prime, Johnson had a wobbly record of 9-9-2 in his last 20 fights – many of those losses hard-fought battles lost by controversial split decisions.

Now Johnson, whose weathered face makes him look years older than his age, can’t be found. After winning three consecutive upsets in the last 12 months – including a knockout of Roy Jones Jr. in September and a split decision over Antonio Tarver last Saturday – he’s chosen to escape the spotlight. He’s off vacationing on some beach in the Caribbean, and he’s asked his manager not to disclose his exact location.

“Glen wants some privacy,” said manager Henry Foster of Miami. “He wants to rest and reflect and take it all in.”

There’s a lot take in. Looking back, it’s been a magical year for Johnson.

It started in February, when Johnson flew to Sheffield, England, for a shot at the vacant IBF light-heavyweight crown. Johnson beat the hometown favorite, Clinton Woods, and when Johnson returned to Miami with the title in his luggage and a $50,000 purse in his pocket, he put his hammer and tools away for good.

Seven months later, Johnson was summoned to play sacrificial lamb for the pound-for-pound great one, Jones Jr., who was looking to boost his confidence after getting knocked out by the smooth-talking tactician, Antonio Tarver. Johnson was considered a wild underdog against Jones Jr., but he knocked him out in Round 9. Jones was so beaten it took more than five minutes for ringside doctors to escort him to his stool.

A few days after that conquest, for which he received a purse of $700,000, Johnson dropped to his knees at his victory party inside a Fort Lauderdale nightclub and proposed marriage. His girlfriend, Jillian Hall, said yes.

Next up was Tarver. Again, Johnson waked into the ring as an underdog. It was not hard to see Tarver winning the fight. He had too much buck to his punch, many argued. He was too skilled, too accurate, too determined.

Instead, after 12 hard-fought rounds and 12 serendipitous months, it was the Road Warrior who capped a fitting finale to a memorable year, winning the kind of split decision that had haunted him throughout his career.

Johnson, who moved from his native Jamaica to Miami at the age of 14 and didn’t start boxing until turning 20, raised his record to 42-9-2 with 28 knockouts. The mild-mannered 175-pounder once came to a nightclub in the Bronx and beat top-ranked Eric Harding for $5,000; his purse from the Tarver fight was $1 million.

“It’s a fairy tale,” Foster said. “It’s not the lotto, it’s not fate, none of that. It’s the refusal to quit.”

The onetime journeyman is now the undisputed champ at 175 pounds, although both Johnson and Tarver vacated their belts to fight each other. He’s also a virtual shoo-in for the Boxing Writers’ Association of America’s Fighter of the Year honors, which will be announced in February.

Sure, you can make other arguments for Fighter of the Year. Start with Diego Corrales. After coming out of prison on a domestic violence charge and teaming up with California trainer Joe Goosen, Corrales avenged a loss to Cuban gold medalist Joel Casamayor, winning a split decision. Five months later, Corrales came back to dethrone 135-pound champ Acelino Freitas of Brazil, stopping him in the 10th round.

You can also make an argument for the Baby-Faced Assassin, Marco Antonio Barrera. After getting humiliated and knocked down by the effervescent Manny Pacquiao in November 2003, Barrera came back in June with a crushing stoppage of former champ Paulie Ayala. Five months later, Barrera was sensational against longtime nemesis Erik Morales and out pointed him thoroughly to win the best of an epic trilogy.

Both Corrales and Barrera, well-known fighters with top tier grooming, conditioning, and handling, were able to pull of two convincing wins this year. Glencoffe Johnson won three.

As compelling as Johnson’s achievement of beating Woods, Jones Jr., and Tarver is the spirit with which he beat them. He attacked them all like a junkyard dog drunk on Red Bull. He swarmed. He smothered. He stalked. He would not stop punching – to the arms, to the body, to the head, then back again.

It seemed that Johnson would tire easily, exposing himself to a knockout after fighting at such a rampant, never-say-die pace. That never happened. He never stopped coming.

Johnson’s victories have moral undertones. They are blows to the boxing purists who champion cautious fighters boasting backward footwork, scholarly technique, and boring bouts. They are blows to the silk-pajama fighters who have coasted to titles on the backs of soft opponents, and now reap big paydays from their marquee names.

The winner are the thousands of lunch-pail fighters skipping rope in boxing gyms right now. His come-from-nowhere coup d’etat of the light heavyweight class is a triumph for those who still believe that boxing dreams can come true – so long as you’re willing to give more punches than you take.