By Keith Idec
LAS VEGAS – The devastation Daniel Jacobs experienced in July 2010 should’ve prevented him from following through with his first middleweight title fight.
His grandmother, Cordelia Jacobs, died the week of what to that point was the biggest fight of his career. Daniel Jacobs, surrounded by family members, watched the woman who helped raise him take her last breath.
The next day, Jacobs boarded a plane for Las Vegas. The day after that, he had to make the middleweight limit for his 160-pound championship match with undefeated Dmitry Pirog.
The next night, just a few days after his grandmother died, Jacobs suffered the first defeat of his professional career. Jacobs was ahead 39-37 on all three scorecards, until Pirog drilled him with a right hand that left the Brooklyn native flat on his back.
Referee Robert Byrd stopped counting at five and waved an end to their fight 57 seconds into the fifth round. Jacobs reflected on that experience this week, when he noted how entirely different the preparation has been for his first fight in Las Vegas since suffering that technical-knockout loss nearly nine years ago.
“It was hard for me, the Pirog fight,” said Jacobs, who’ll encounter Canelo Alvarez on Saturday night at T-Mobile Arena. “It was the biggest mental challenge that I’ve ever had to face in my life because my grandmother, she was like my mom. She was my rock. She was my angel, right? And we had the fight set up for Saturday. We were in the hospital with her Tuesday and Wednesday. Our flight was scheduled to leave Thursday. She passed away on Wednesday, with everybody, all my family around her, at the table. We actually seen her take her last breaths. So, for all of us just experiencing that, it was so devastating.
“And I had to get on a plane the next morning and head out to Vegas to face the toughest opponent I could ever face at that time. And mentally, I just feel like I didn’t have enough time to grieve and get my mind right to go for battle. Because when you go for battle, we know boxing is mental. You have to be headstrong, too. So, for me, I’m just ecstatic that I’m going into this fight with the confidence, the full confidence, the mental capacities I need to be victorious in every way, shape, form.”
Jacobs considered withdrawing from the Pirog fight once he lost his grandmother. He decided, however, that he wanted to go win that title to honor her memory.
“Yeah, I considered it,” Jacobs said. “But at that time, I wanted to do it for her glory. You know, I had my team, I had so many other people – Al [Haymon] was telling me, ‘Don’t take the fight. You know, there’s gonna be other opportunities.’ But for me, I thought that I can do it in her honor. And I had training camp for so long, I didn’t want all that to go to waste. And, you know, I made the judgment call. It was the wrong call, but I’m grateful for all that happened because it mentally made me a better person, a better fighter and mentally strong in this part of my career.”
Whereas Jacobs came to Las Vegas basically 2½ days before he opposed Pirog, he has been here 2½ weeks in advance of facing Alvarez in their 12-round middleweight title unification fight. The 28-year-old Alvarez (51-1-2, 35 KOs), the WBA/WBC 160-pound champ, is a 4-1 favorite over Jacobs (35-2, 29 KOs), the IBF champ, approaching a main event DAZN will stream.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.
