“I love my life; I got a pretty good one,” says the 36-year-old Texan, who returns to the lightweight division to face Jim Miller this Saturday in New York City. “I’m excited about the move up; it’s got me feeling like an athlete again. So yeah, I’d say it’s pretty good.”
Not bad for someone bringing a 1-3 record in his last four fights to Madison Square Garden to be the “bad guy” against local favorite Miller, but if the fight game has taught us anything, it’s that all wins and losses aren’t created equal. So take a close decision loss to Billy Quarantillo, a knockout defeat at the hands of Dan Ige where he got caught, and a second decision defeat to Chepe Mariscal in which Mariscal weighed in at 149.5 pounds, and add in the reality of Jackson sweating down to the 145-pound featherweight limit, and it’s not like he got blown out in three fights.
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But he did have to make some decisions, one of which was to make the move to lightweight, where he hasn’t fought since 2018. And oh, he’s loving it.
“I’m done cutting to featherweight,” Jackson said. “That’s 30 pounds. I walk around about 175, so I can make the weight, for sure, but I think my body needs a break from cutting the weight and I don’t really want to make a move up and then make the move back down. So, I’m definitely planning on this being a permanent thing. I don’t see any other way that I would make the move down to featherweight. It’s a lot on my body and I think that my body is just going to handle 155 so much better. So I’m excited just to get in there. We’ll see how it feels and see how everything plays out. But I’m planning on staying at ‘55.”
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