The phrase "a thug with a" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used in contexts where you are describing someone who is perceived as a thug and is associated with a particular characteristic or item.
Example: "He was known in the neighborhood as a thug with a reputation for violence."
Alternatives: "a gangster with a" or "a criminal with a".
Mr. Voight is well suited to the part of Mickey, a thug with a perpetual air of menace beneath the blarney.
Mr. Fraser's character, a thug with a soft spot, impulsively hides her from Fingers and falls in love with her against his better judgment.
Pastore returned to the screen, his wise-guy delivery bigger than ever, and gave a far-out benediction, sounding like a thug with a song in his heart.
In "Strip Tease," a thug with a staple gun is torturing a pimp and two prostitutes; the thug passes out, and the prostitutes turn the staple gun on him.
Before he vaulted to the top, his criminal profile, sketched in Federal Bureau of Investigation and New York Police Department records, was that of a thug with a bulky arrest record who had served two prison sentences for bungled crimes.
She takes a job as a cocktail waitress in a sleazy nightclub run by Caran Bogdan Diklicc), a thug with a shaved head, a hair-trigger temper and a gambling habit.
The notorious film A Clockwork Orange is to receive its British TV premiere on Sky Box Office on July 4. Stanley Kubrick's 1971 futuristic thriller, based on the book by Anthony Burgess, stars Malcolm McDowell as Alex, a thug with an interest in "rape and ultraviolence".
If Tony Soprano is a thug with inner wounds, Leroy is a thug who longs to act tenderly.
And having stepped to center stage, he has to start acting more like a global citizen, instead of a thug with convenient petro pals.
"Brotherhood" delivers a thug with brain trauma.
Erdogan had sparked an outcry after he called Elvan a thug with links to a "terrorist organisation" and encouraged his supporters at a rally to boo the teenager's mother.
