Eventually he found himself alone in East Los Angeles, California, where he became involved in gangs and joined the Ku Klux Klan by the time he was 14.

[3] In 1983, Johnny became a professional wrestler and was trained (along with his brother Terry Clary) by former NWA World Junior Heavyweight Champion, Danny Hodge.

He mentions a first brush with evangelical Christianity in the mid-to-late 1980s but, he claims, he was scared into returning to the KKK and went on to become the Imperial Wizard of the whole White Knights organization in 1989.

He teamed up with Wade Watts, a preacher and former leader of the Oklahoma chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) with whom he had previously sparred on numerous occasions during his time in the KKK.

[6] The story of Clary's conversion from a Klansman to an anti-racism preacher has drawn the attention of numerous Christian media outlets and several national Australian talk shows.

He appeared on talk shows such as Donahue, and Geraldo, discussing racial issues in the U.S.[citation needed] Clary was an ordained minister under World Evangelism Fellowship and Church Of God In Christ and lived in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.