Now Jacobs sits poised to take his biggest step yet on Saturday night when he takes on middleweight contender Dmitry Pirog as the co-feature on what many are calling the card of the year, Juan Manuel Marquez-Juan Diaz II live on HBO PPV from the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, NV. I spoke with Danny from his training camp in the Poconos midway through the camp.
“Everything is great. I am definitely blessed,” he said in his relaxed yet confident tenor that is getting more bass as he ages. “I’ve been in camp for about three weeks now. Another three-and-a-half weeks to go. Still a lot of hard work to do.”
Jacobs ran down the list and revealed something interesting in the description of one that led us to talk a bit about one preparation habit that sets him apart from most, if not all, young fighters I’ve covered.
“We got this guy named Odama. He’s like a super middleweight from Ghana,” said Jacobs. “We got Anthony Hanshaw and we got this guy David- amateur guy- but he’s a real slick amateur guy. He emulates my opponent to the tee. With all three of those combined, bringing in fresh guys every three or four rounds, it really pushes me. I think we’re going to have a good showing come the 31st.”
Now most guys would trust their trainer to find a guy who looks or acts like the opponent and be done with it. Danny Jacobs is not most guys, spending hours and hours studying his opponents’ fights. Like a true winner, Jacobs looks for everything he can to get him an edge. Like John Wooden said, “Failure to prepare is preparing to fail” and Jacobs prepares like a champion should.
“I’ve seen a whole lot of him,” he explained. “I’m not one of those guys who doesn’t watch tapes of their opponents. I watch a lot of tapes of guys I’m going to be fighting because there’s something that you might see that your trainer doesn’t see or someone else might not see. I definitely want to be fully prepared. A lot of guys depend on their adjustments when you could take it to another step and look at the tapes and have that much over your opponent. So that’s what I do. I watch a lot of tapes.”
In Pirog, Jacobs faces an Eastern European fighter with a solid amateur pedigree, yet with a twist. Pirog is not your run-of-the-mill, stand-up-straight, no-upper-body-movement Euro. Not by a long shot. He shoulder rolls, jukes, spins and pops you while you’re not looking. His trainer has a style he has developed where he has taken the best parts of the Euro classic technique and blended it with the best of the American style to make for a technically sound yet able-to-improvise intelligent Euro fighter. Take that blend and stuff it, MMA. Pirog is no joke.
“This is definitely- as far as my professional career- probably one of the hardest fights that I am going to have,” admitted Jacobs. “He is a trickster type of fighter. He has good movement. He doesn’t really have good hand speed but he has good movement and he throws a lot of punches. So I know he’s going to come to throw a lot of punches and to have that action packed fight and to make his stand in the U.S. because this will be his first time here so I know he is looking to come and make a bang. But we have a game plan; come July 31, I think we are going to execute it to a tee.”
Jacobs is a star in New York because of his amateur days but has fought in Vegas seven times to twice in New York. According to Jacobs, his manager, Al Haymon, felt Jacobs’ style both in and out of the ring would sell better in Vegas and so the young fighter has been groomed accordingly from the day he came into the pro ranks.
“You know it’s been like that because my manager Al Haymon set out for it to be that way,” explained Jacobs. “Because he thought that I was such an exciting fighter, he just wanted the media to be all over me and with there being few fights in [New York City], I wouldn’t get that much recognition as if I was fighting in Las Vegas and fighting on those big undercards. The media and the fight fans would get to know me a lot more. Then hopefully, if I become a champion, then we can take it back to New York and start building there because I know my fans in New York are just dying to support and come to my fights and see a good show.”
The Mayweather vs. Hatton card doesn’t seem that long ago, just a few trips ago to Vegas, really. To Jacobs, it seems like yesterday. A title shot just seemed to rush up on him as he was busy developing his craft and stepping up his game.
“It did happen fast,” he said with a smile I could hear through the phone. “It actually did. I can still remember the punches I threw in my pro debut. So you know it’s a fast track but, at the same time, when you feel like you’re ready and you feel like you have the skills to pretty much pay the bills, then you want to go for it. You want the best people on your team to give you the best opportunity to go for it with whatever you have. So we have an excellent team. We have trainers, fitness coaches as well as great sparring partners. Everybody is putting in hard work, making me work hard so we can go ahead and get that championship.”
When he had last talked, Jacobs was about to come back from a hand injury and he told me he wasn’t sure when he’d fight for a title but that Haymon had a plan and he was trusting in that. Jacobs was surprised that the plan moved this fast.
“No I didn’t know I would be moving this fast,” he said. “Al is a very smart and intelligent guy. He is very behind the scenes but he is hands-on. He’s 100% hands-on and he has hands in everything. The plan he set out…he says, ‘You know, Danny, everything we said, we are doing.” And I have to commend him on that because everything he set forth to be, it is. I just have to play my part and execute and make sure the plan is done.”
Ready or not here the shot comes. Though, to Jacobs, it still hadn’t quite sunk in yet.
“It really seems unreal. It really doesn’t feel like I am fighting for the middleweight championship of the world,” Jacobs said. “It really hasn’t hit me yet. Maybe when I get to the final press conference and to the venue and things of that nature, maybe it will hit me. But I have been staying away from the internet. I just been using my Twitter and my Facebook to connect with the fans but I haven’t really gotten into the hype of the fight. I’m just rolling with it and training, not like it’s a regular or another fight. I’m training as if it’s a world championship fight but just not letting the hype getting to me.”
Whether or not Jacobs is fighting for the true middleweight title is not in question. The linear version of that title belongs to Sergio Martinez, who won it from Kelly Pavlik who won it from Jermain Taylor who won it from Bernard Hopkins who beat Father Time in a rubbermatch to get the title back in 1908. OK, that last part is an exaggeration. Jacobs is fighting for the WBO version of the middleweight title stripped from Sergio Martinez when he failed to meet the WBO’s demands. But still, Pirog is a worthy challenger, as is Jacobs. Fans may call it a paper title but Jacobs knows the fight won’t be fought on paper and there was nothing fake about any of the sacrifices he made to get here. The most recent of which was the sudden passing of his grandmother who raised him. Nothing will deter him from his goal and should he reach it, nothing will convince him he’s not a champion who earned this moment.
“I think it will be disrespectful to my...like I know people, the fans and everybody, the majority of the true boxing fans will see me as just a paper champion,” Jacobs explained. “But to the blue-collar and my fans they will consider me a true champion. It would be disrespectful to call myself a paper champion because of all the hard work that I put in and disrespectful to the hard work my team put in. It would be disrespectful to the guys who worked to get me to this level. So I won’t disrespect myself and call me a paper champion because, if it was up to me, I would fight Sergio Martinez for the belt.”
Speaking of Martinez, how does Jacobs feel he would match up with him?
“Oh gosh, there are not too many guys that I want to fight but, you know, with the situation at hand, as far as people calling the winner of this fight a paper champion, it just put this feeling I have for Sergio Martinez and really wanting to prove myself,” said Jacobs suddenly a little more intense. “I definitely want to fight Sergio Martinez down the line. I think a fight between me and him would be phenomenal. We’re both boxers but, at the same time, I can box or I can rumble and brawl. I just think he moves and he is slick. We would definitely have a game plan to execute at that time. But I’m taking it slow-motion. I’m still a young guy. I haven’t even made it three years in the game. We are taking our time and picking the right fights to step up that ladder and be ready for guys like Sergio Martinez and all those guys. But if it’s up to me, I’d fight Sergio tomorrow.”
At 23 and with only a tough fight with Ishe Smith at the elite level, Jacobs is still a young and growing fighter. If there has been one thing I have noted over the years with Jacobs, it’s his willingness to accept his mistakes in the ring and learn from them. Nothing has changed in that regard.
“As far as some things I can work on- the biggest I’ve had with Ishe [Smith]- I saw some things that I could’ve corrected in the fight as well as during training,” Jacobs said. “A lot of things that I looked at and said ‘I should have done this and I should have done that.’ We tried to implement those in this camp and definitely the fight. I’m just looking to improve and improve. I don’t want to look at tapes of my previous fights and say, ‘I should have done this.’ I really want to watch it and learn what I do wrong and put into work in the fights.”
Finally, I asked Jacobs one more question: Is it better to win the title or to be exciting?
“To me it is more important to be exciting,” Jacobs surprised me. “I have a great personality and I think I can sell myself. But, at the same time, true fans and true boxers, they love excitement and they love toe-to-toe action. I think I possess both. I can be a boxer and I can give fans what they want. Like with Ishe Smith, I was on my toes. But when it got time to get down and dirty, I gave the fans a great show. So I think as time goes on, I will be a great and exciting champion.”
Time always tells and, for Jacobs, the time is now.
You can email Gabriel at maxgmontoya@gmail.com, follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/gabriel_montoya and catch him on each Monday’s episode of “The Next Round” with Steve Kim or tune into hear him live on Thursdays at 5-8 PM PST when he co-hosts the BlogTalk radio show Leave-It-In-The-Ring.com. Gabriel is a full member of the Boxing Writers Association of America.
