The scar that runs down his spine which looks like a zipper on a trendy coat says everything about Daniel Jacobs.
One look at that scar, the type that can make a queasy person faint, and you know that this is a man who has been through something serious.
And it is, in a way, a window into his soul, a sign of the champion he has become.
Jacobs (32-1, 29 KOs) will fight Gennady Golovkin (36-0, 33 KOs) on Saturday at Madison Square Garden in New York for the IBF, WBA and WBC middleweight titles in what is assuredly the biggest fight of Golovkin?s stellar career, but is nothing of the kind for Jacobs.
No matter how hard Golovkin hits him, now matter how many consecutive punches he lands cleanly, nothing will impact Jacobs the way the words he heard that May day in 2011, words that still resonate in his mind:
You have cancer.
You might die.
Those words will quickly get one?s attention, even a preternaturally gifted boxer who had the world literally at his feet before the diagnosis that threatened to rob him of everything. He was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, and had a tumor on his spine.
It was devastating, but Jacobs had experience dealing with tragedy. In July 2010, as he prepared to face Dmitry Pirog in his first shot at the world title, Cordelia Jacobs, his grandmother and the woman who raised him, died about a week before the fight.
They had an extraordinary relationship, and her death rocked him to his core. But he went ahead with his fight for the WBO middleweight title, believing it?s what she would have wanted for him. He was leading on all three scorecards after four rounds, and he was far ahead in the statistics. He?d landed more, and at a higher percentage.
But Pirog hit the then-undefeated 23-year-old with a crushing right cross as they battled on the ropes, and Jacobs went down.
It was a loss, and another thing he?d have to overcome.
?I didn?t want to continue on with the fight, but he insisted,? his trainer, Andre Rozier, said. ?It was a rough time in his life. He was an emotional wreck. I wanted to postpone it and reschedule it, but he wanted to go.?
Shortly after the fight, as fans and media were saying that he?d been protected by his promoter and had been exposed, Jacobs and his team plotted his comeback.
Rozier said the comeback actually began as Jacobs lay flat on his back on the mat after being dropped by Pirog, referee Robert Byrd counting over him.
?You watch the tape of that fight, it?s all over the internet, and you?ll see Danny trying to get up and keep going,? Rozier said. ?The referee counted to four and just stopped and said the bout was over. And immediately ? immediately ? say, ?What the [expletive] are you doing? I?m OK!? He wanted to keep fighting. That?s how he is. He doesn?t let anything get him down.?
Jacobs? team decided to take a few winnable fights in the wake of the loss to get him back on track and help rebuild his confidence. The second of those was a first-round knockout of Robert Kliewer on March 5, 2011, in Anaheim, Calif.
He was just about back to where he had been after the Kliewer fight. Once again, major fights beckoned, but life yet again cruelly intervened.
A few weeks after the Kliewer fight, Jacobs felt numbness in his legs. He was only 24, but needed a cane to help steady himself as he walked. Not long after, a cane wasn?t good enough. He required a walker to get around.
