How Aussie boxer Luke Jackson overcame drugs, alcohol and severe OCD to fight for a world title
LUKE Jackson would speed his old Commodore down the highway, eyes shut and counting.One … two … three … four … five …
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LUKE Jackson would speed his old Commodore down the highway, eyes shut and counting.
One … two … three … four … five …
“Should’ve died,” the Aussie boxer says. “But I couldn’t help it.
“I’d be driving along and, suddenly, have to see how long I could go with my eyes shut.
“Other times, it was about holding my breath.
“Then, suicide. I’d obsess about ways to kill myself.
“But I’d quit school in Year 8.
“Was doing a lot of drugs and alcohol.
“For a while there, I really was just waiting for my life to fold.”
Seated now with The Saturday Telegraph inside a small Sydney gym, Jackson is talking through his unlikely rise from that hurtling Holden to a blockbuster WBO world featherweight title fight against Irishman Carl Frampton, on Sunday week in Belfast.
A bout, incidentally, which nobody believes Jackson can win.
For despite going unbeaten in 16 professional fights, and despite having Olympic rings tattooed on his bicep, Jackson will enter Windsor Park Stadium as a $13 long shot with bookies.
“But that’s nothing,” he shrugs. “I’m not even supposed to be here”.
And why?
“I come from a shitty background,” says the boy from Hobart housing commission who now trains out of Sydney.
“I was raised by a single mum, but she was heavily into drugs. Isn’t in a good way even now.
“And eventually, I headed down that path too.”
Worse, Jackson was suffering severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
“It started when I was young, just touching things a lot,” he recalls. “Then I became obsessed with cleaning.
“Then, drugs.
“And my thing, it was always about getting to the number seven.”
Which is bad when you’re, say, turning off a light switch. But far worse when hurtling, blind, down a highway.
“If I hadn’t found boxing, I’d be dead,” the 33-year-old says simply. “Thankfully, the sport is now what I obsess over.”
Isn’t it what?
Picking up his first pair of gloves aged 18, Jackson won 113 times as an amateur, fought twice at the Commonwealth Games — winning bronze in 2006 — before captaining Australian at the 2012 London Olympics.
After a brief retirement, where he drifted back to drugs, the featherweight has since gone undefeated in six years as a professional, along the way while reconnecting with his old man, Tony Pettit, while also working closely with a sports psychologist, a psychiatrist and an OCD specialist.
“And I don’t give a shit what anyone thinks about that,” Jackson says. “It’s my battle.
“I’d always planned to retire after the Olympics — the idea of going professional never interested me — but when I quit the sport, I found myself going back to old ways.
“So I talk to people, take medication, and I box.
“Whenever I’ve been trapped in a hole, it’s boxing has got me out.”
And now on August 19 he fights Frampton, whose 25-1 record includes world titles in two weight classes.
“So it won’t be easy,” Jackson concedes. “But just getting here, it’s been a battle, man.
“Still is.
“Growing up, all I ever wanted was to be somebody. To have people’s respect.
“That’s why I tried boxing.
“As a kid, I used to picture myself walking down the street with people knowing me. Looking and saying to their mates ‘see that guy there, he’s a fighter’.”
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