Featherweight contender Luke ‘Action’ Jackson 16-1 (7) is looking forward to finishing the year on a high after losing by ninth round stoppage to interim WBO 126-pound champion Carl ‘The Jackal’ Frampton in Belfast, Northern Ireland last August.
The 33-year-old Tasmanian will box and eight-rounder on the big MJA Platinum triple-header at the Emporium in Bankstown, Sydney on Friday night.
The loss to Frampton was difficult to digest, but Jackson told Boxing Monthly he quickly resolved to go round again.
“I had a whole month off and ate everything under the sun and put on a lot of weight,” said Jackson, who toured Europe with his girlfriend in the wake of his Windsor Park loss. “But I sort of knew when I was overseas I wanted to fight again, that it wasn’t going to be the last time I was in the ring.
“So I was on holiday and I messaged Billy Hussein, my coach, and asked him what he thought about it, if he thought it was okay if I went around again.
“Because if Billy says no, then it’s over in my eyes. I wouldn’t train with anyone else. I know he has my best interests at heart and if he says ‘No Luke, it’s time to hang them up’, then I’m going to listen to him.”
Coach Hussein, who trains Jackson out of the Bodypunch Boxing Gym in Lakemba in Sydney’s inner-west, said they only focused on the positives after Jackson’s first professional defeat.
“We hardly even spoke about the loss,” revealed Hussein. “We spoke about what an incredible achievement it was just to get there. We spoke about the positives, about the people who said ‘You’re going to turn pro at almost 30, what are you going to get out of it?’. Little things like that.
“I told him ‘Look at where we are, Windsor Park in front of 25,000 people, a career-high payday, the Gypsy King [Tyson Fury] on your undercard, look at what you’ve achieved, what you’ve done’. We didn’t even talk about retirement. We talked about ‘Did you hear the crowd? Did you hear the songs?’. We were having a laugh about it all, saying thing like that. Nothing like ‘We got beat up, we lost’, nothing like that.”
Jackson remains confident that there are still big fights out there for him and, with any luck, a big payday to go with them.
“I’d like to have another shot at a major title against someone,” he said. “Even though I lost that fight I feel we got some big media coverage out of it. I’ve got a good fanbase in the UK, so we could go back there and get another big fight there, but look, I just want to fight in the big fights. I want the big fights and I wouldn’t mind making some money now!”
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