Nikita Tszyu vs. Jack Brubaker fight night: Olympian Luke Jackson’s harrowing cocaine battles, retirement
He was Australia’s boxing captain at the London Olympics. Now Luke Jackson will retire on his terms after turning his life around following a harrowing battle with depression and addiction.
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He is a former Australian Olympics boxing captain who battled cocaine addiction, alcohol abuse and suicidal thoughts before finding salvation with the support of British heavyweight legend Tyson Fury.
Now, reformed and drug-free, Luke Jackson is ready to quit the fight game on his terms.
On Wednesday night, Jackson (20-2, 8KO) will say farewell to boxing with his 23rd and final professional fight on the undercard of the Nikita Tszyu-Jack Brubaker No Limit pay-per-view show at Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion.
‘Action’ Jackson faces a re-match with nemesis Tyson Lantry (10-4, 5KO), seeking redemption after a loss in 2020 that sent the 38-year-old Tasmanian into a drug-addled depression that almost ended in suicide.
Jackson had every reason to value life. He won a bronze medal at Melbourne’s 2006 Commonwealth Games. He later captained Australia’s boxing team at the 2010 Commonwealth Games and 2012 London Olympics.
But at his lowest ebb, Jackson recalls driving with his eyes closed, tempting a terrible fate he is now glad never eventuated.
“This fight is here and I want to exit boxing on a high,” said Jackson.
“I’ve been chasing this re-match for two years. I put in a shocking performance in our first fight and after that, I got really depressed.
“I turned to drugs and drinking and thought about suicide.
“I was just a mess. I thought about taking my life heaps of times. At my worst, I didn’t want to live, but I didn’t want to die either. It was a weird feeling.
“My life was a train wreck.
“I was on massive benders all the time and that wasn’t who I was ... I had to stop chasing happiness in a bag of cocaine.”
Two people played pivotal roles in Jackson’s revival.
One was his partner Kadee, whom he met joining a 5am running club at Sydney’s Bronte Beach.
The other was heavyweight champion of the world Fury, who waged his own battle with depression, booze and dark thoughts.
To this day, Jackson has a voice message from Fury on his phone, a 29-second source of inspiration from the ‘Gypsy King’.
“Meeting my girlfriend Katie Hollis has been the best thing to happen to me. She is the best gift I’ve ever been given,” Jackson said.
“I had never touched cocaine until the age of 28.
“I only tried it after the Olympics. I was a bit down (after losing in the first round) and after I did it, I was hooked on it and I couldn‘t stop.
“I’ve had mental battles since I was a kid. Two people close to me took their life when I was a kid and I thought that was part of what you did in life if things got tough.
“No-one really spoke to me about what you do, so I bottled everything up and I thought, ‘Oh well, if it gets too much, I will just kill myself’.
“Tyson Fury helped turn my life around.
“He fought on my card in my world-title loss (in 2018). We stayed in touch, I told him my life was a shit show and he then sent me a voice message, which I still listen to today.
“Not long after talking to Tyson, I pulled my head in and started sorting my life out.”
Jackson hopes to beat Lantry and is relishing a new chapter in life.
“I once needed boxing but I can’t wait for my life after boxing with Katie,” he said.
“I’ve been sober for two years now.
“Thankfully I didn’t take my life because life is beautiful and my advice to anyone is don’t go down that path.
“I’m very happy now. I’m just trying to be a better person every day.”
FIRE AND ICE: INSIDE THE TSZYU BROTHERS’ COMPLEX RELATIONSHIP
By Brendan Bradford
After each of his four suspensions from Newington College, Nikita Tszyu’s principal would ring his mum, Natasha, and say the same thing.
“They kept telling her, ‘Your son needs to think before he does things, his brain doesn’t work in the right way’,” Tszyu tells this masthead.
It’s been a constant in his life.
It’s a classic case of middle child syndrome, says Nikita, who fights Jack Brubaker in a pay per view blockbuster at the Hordern Pavilion this Wednesday.
“What they say about middle children is pretty accurate,” he says. “They’re the loose cannons, and that’s what I’ve always been.”
It’s where Nikita and his older brother, Tim, differ.
They’re close, and regularly train alongside one another at the same gym their dad did. They each get more nervous watching the other fight than they do for their own fights.
But while Nikita is more likely to act on the spur of the moment, Tim is much more calculated.
They’re like fire and ice.
Again, it stems from their middle child and oldest sibling dynamic.
“Tim had a bit of responsibility when my parents split up, because he was the older brother and the new man of the house,” Nikita explains. “It was really a step up.
“He took on that role, and even when we were kids, he was always more mature, and was always worried about me.
“I didn’t really help with the way I was though, just doing things with no thought.”
Both Tszyu boys were raised under what at times felt like a “military camp,” with their old man Kostya bursting into their room every morning before sunrise for their daily run.
“There were no alarm clocks, and he’d just burst in screaming and if we weren’t downstairs in, like, 30 seconds, we were f***ed,” Nikita says. “It felt like a military camp.”
Asked what would happen if they weren’t at the front door ready to hit the pavement, Nikita just laughs.
“We never tested it,” he says. “You don’t push his buttons, that was the rule.
“You didn’t want to defy the rules, you just got up, and if you took too long, he’d scream at you again.
“He’s a scary man when he gets triggered.”
When Tim became the “new man of the house” after Kostya relocated to Russia, he maintained some of the tough approach that his dad used.
The key word here being some.
“My brother treated me very tough,” Nikita says. “I was rag-dolled around. Not in a negative way, but just because I was the younger brother and I was used to it.
“And just because of the way I was.”
So the schoolyard became the place where he’d push the boundaries, which in turn led to all of those suspensions.
“I was a bit of a bully,” he says. “My brother used to be very tough, then I’d take that same energy to school and it would be considered bullying. But I was just brought up very tough.
“I was always respectful to my teachers – we were always taught that from an early age – but it was the other kids that I pushed.”
Pushing the boundaries to their absolute limits is something Nikita has in common with his dad.
When he was studying to become an architect, it was fairly common for Nikita to stay awake for two nights’ straight finishing projects.
Then he’d get annoyed at other students, and eventually co-workers, for not going to the same extremes.
“I’d get frustrated because they’d go to sleep. They’d slack off,” he told this masthead last year. “I’m staying up all night like, ‘drink a coffee, you’ll be sweet’.”
With Nikita, like it was with Kostya, it’s zero or 100, and no in betweens.
Like when he took the drastic measure of eating a still-beating snake heart, and drinking the same snake’s blood, while on a training camp in Thailand this year.
Or when he became fascinated by redwood trees during lockdown, so made a spontaneous detour while in America to visit a redwood forest north of San Francisco.
“There’s something magical and special about them,” he says. “We went for a hike, I was full of energy, but my mum and sister were struggling.
“I kept wanting to go further and further up the mountain and they were getting the shits with me.”
The spontaneous trip to see his favourite species of tree, then nearly losing daylight because he wanted to explore the forest, is classic Nikita.
“Taking things to the extremes, some people can’t handle it,” he says. “It’s the same with everything.
“There’s something in me that really enjoys pushing peoples’ buttons, and when people react, it’s even more fun.
“It makes me want to push even further. It’s something my dad does as well.
“We actually have a pretty damn similar personality. We’re also just little shits trying to cause chaos.”
Chaotic is also a good way to describe Nikita’s boxing career so far too. His last win was a wild 51 second beat down of Ben Bommber, but he was also in a highly entertaining back-and-forth brawl with Jeff Horn’s brother, Ben.
On Wednesday though, he wants to slow things down, and take his time.
A little bit more like his older brother.
“I’ve gotta be very cautious, my brain has to be switched on,” he says. “I’ve only been past four rounds once, so for me it’s another lesson, another new skill to develop.
“When I try to finish a fight too early, I feel like my judgement gets clouded and I don’t perform at my best.
“I’m expecting it to be as hard as possible and I’m preparing for it to be a very long night. I have to really put my punches together, think about it and then the stoppage will be there.”
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Originally published as Nikita Tszyu vs. Jack Brubaker fight night: Olympian Luke Jackson’s harrowing cocaine battles, retirement
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