Jay "Action" Jackson

Jay Jackson has fought for money since 2010, through boxing gyms, local MMA cages, a short pro wrestling run and now bare knuckle.

Cason Banyas got him on Salty's Fight Talk a week out from a fight in Clearwater, Florida, on May 2. Cason had watched him fight in person more than once, including the last one in Albuquerque, and he told Jackson the stats could wait. What the listeners wanted was how a kid from Bay City, Michigan turned into Jay Action Jackson. Jackson had just come out of his second session of the day and was counting the days out loud.

Bare knuckle is a beautiful science, Jackson says, and the appeal is in what it leaves out. No kicks, no takedowns, two minute rounds, and less time to think. He came up in boxing, fought MMA locally for years, trains jiu jitsu and works out of a Muay Thai gym, so he talks about the sport as a set of arts he respects rather than a ladder he climbed. The part of his own fighting he thinks people miss is the technical part. He believes the Kyle fight showed footwork and poise and got read as a brawl, and he gives his fans credit for seeing it. He watched Gomez box in February and says he sees a lot of himself in him.

In March 2010 he was 19 or 20, working at a mall in Georgia, and he says he had to start over. He began at ABAA Boxing in Bay City, off Miltman Street, under a coach named Bob whose one rule was that a bar fight got you put out of the gym. Bob broke that rule himself until he died last year. Jackson went viral in 2012 after a near double knockout that followed a serious weight cut. He was chasing a WWE career when COVID hit. He got three matches, a debut against the Brooklyn Brawler, and masked sessions with Rikishi in Los Angeles, then let it go because bare knuckle was still running down south. A day out from one fight, Williams smacked him on stage and ran off. Jackson waited the 24 hours.

A couple of weeks before the fight he spent a week in Maui with a friend he had not seen in 15 years. Every morning they sat with notebooks for an hour or so, prayed, and talked about what they could do better. He ran a seminar for a small boxing club and told the kids his story. Off the plane, jet lagged, he went straight to the gym. He was going back to Trinity Yoga that night to stretch his hamstrings, because it was Thursday, and Thursday meant a week out.