Danny Jacobs. Hero.
Combat sports like boxing are among the most unforgiving in the world. It is just you, and your will to fight, that gets you to the top. No team-mates, no equipment, nowhere to hide.
To even compete, never mind win world titles, you need to be a supreme physical specimen and usually the champs have years and years of unbroken training behind them.
However, last night in Brooklyn, on the same card that Danny Garcia did this, another boxer showed that even the biggest set back can’t stop you from reaching your goals.
Three years ago, Danny Jacobs (right, main pic) was diagnosed with ostersarcoma, an aggressive form of cancer that kills one in three of the people who get it. In Jacobs, the disease affected his spine and his legs were partially paralyzed due to how the tumour had wrapped itself around his nerves.
After a number of operations, and against the advice of his doctors, Jacobs was back in the ring less than 18 months after his diagnosis. That was in October 2012 and now, less than two years after that first fight back, Jacobs is a world champion, credited as the first to overcome cancer and win a belt.
With Gennady Golovkin moved up to WBA Super Champion, the regular WBA middleweight title was free and Jacobs boxed Jarrod Fletcher for the belt last night. Jacobs, unsurprisingly known as ‘Miracle Man’, won in the fifth round to claim the championship.
“I’m still emotional. It hasn’t hit me yet,” Jacobs said in a New York Daily News report. What a story, and what a fighter, in every sense of the word.
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