Kevin Jackson Is Grateful To Give Back

“I think that's been a constant throughout my coaching career,” said Jackson, who is currently an Assistant Coach at the University of Michigan. “Eventually one of the guys on the team will google me and that might pop up, and then they'll start investigating that and asking questions. But, for sure, they really don't know, and when you tell them UFC 14, they think you're really old.”

UFC Celebrates Black History Month

Jackson laughs, nearly 24 years after his last mixed martial arts bout. It wasn’t a long career for the Lansing native, only six fights, but it was a memorable one that included four UFC fights, a tournament win and a shot at the inaugural UFC 205-pound title.

“I knew, even back in the day, that it was gonna be the sport of the millennium,” he said. “I thought it was gonna be a prime time sport, but I never really locked into the growth and the financial gain of that opportunity until it really showed itself with Randy Couture staying in that game and doing his thing.”

Over the years, it became clear that Jackson was before his time, and when he did join wrestlers like Couture, Mark Coleman, Mark Kerr, Dan Severn, Mark Schultz, Royce Alger, Kenny Monday and Don Frye in mixed martial arts, it was a big deal because he was just a few years removed from winning gold in Barcelona. That didn’t mean everybody was happy about Jackson making the move to a still misunderstood sport.

“Back when we joined it, and even before I fought, it really was no holds barred,” said Jackson. “And so when I finally got in it, they had eliminated the headbutt and you couldn't kick the guy when he's on the ground, so more and better rules came into place, and that made it a little better for me, and for my wife (Laughs), to deal with the situation.

"Some wrestlers and coaches and parents were excited about it because they could see the art of the sport. But especially back then, it was still banned in the majority of states here in America, so with my family, there was a little fear that my parents had to deal with.

#BlackHistoryMonth: USA Wrestling sits down with Olympic champions @KennyMonday @CoachKJ__ @alliseeisgold and @MensahTamStock #BHMhttps://t.co/YcBrUJYWRG

— USA Wrestling (@USAWrestling) February 18, 2022

“At the same time people on the in realized that we worked so hard to accomplish our goals as Olympic and World medalists, and the reward is not great or anything that you can really springboard from to set your family in a better situation,” he continues.

“And so a lot of people recognized it was an opportunity. I think Kurt Angle had already gone to the WWE, so there were a few opportunities, but it was a mixed bag. Some of them were like, ‘What are you doing, you're an Olympic gold medalist and that's a backroom, bar, alley type of show that you're gonna be involved in, and your standards should be higher than that’ So there was some of that, but a couple old coaches were like, ‘Yeah, man, I did a little bit of that back in the day.’ (Laughs)

"But in the end, it all panned out to be really positive, not only for the sport of wrestling. I think when me and Kenny Monday got in it, it legitimized the sport (MMA) as a real sport as opposed to being full of barroom brawlers and people off the street with a funny background. Now you had two Olympic gold medalists actually participating, and you had Couture, Schultz and Coleman that were in it. But when me and Kenny got into it, I think it shed a different light on the sport. So it was a mix of good and bad from the wrestling community.”

Jackson and Monday would debut on the same Extreme Fighting 4 card (one that also featured future UFC Hall of Famers Maurice Smith and Pat Miletich) on March 28, 1997, and after Jackson submitted John Lober, he was in the Octagon four months later.

On this date in 1992, @USAWrestling's John Smith & Kevin Jackson win gold and Chris Campbell wins bronze at Olympics.

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“When I didn't make the Olympic team in '96, I was like, I gotta make this money up somehow,” he explains. “And MMA came into play with that opportunity. Normally, I'd go to the World championships and the Olympic Games, get a medal there and receive a bigger bonus than I was getting through my stipends each month. So I missed out on that by not making the Olympic team. So I was thinking with the fight game, I could make up some of that money. So as my career ended and I was in the fight game, a job opening became available at USA Wrestling at the Olympic Training Center, training senior level athletes full-time for Olympic and World experience.

"So when I was being hired, my executive director, my immediate boss, asked me to not do it. It (MMA) still was frowned upon. I personally thought I could take this job, continue to coach and train, and then get one or two fights over in Japan and make an extra $50,000 a year for the most part. So I was really planning on doing that. But when I was asked not to do it, I just really didn't put enough thought into it and stepped away from the MMA world and went full-time coaching. And that's why I didn't continue to do it.

"I regret that, looking back at it, and seeing the success of Randy Couture and being able to fight until your upper age. I feel like if I really would have focused and put the right amount of training with the right coaches, I really feel like I could have dominated the sport at that time.”

As in almost any endeavor, sporting or otherwise, timing is everything. So what if everything could have been fast-forwarded five years? Does Kevin Jackson enter the UFC in 2002 with the sport more established under the early years of the Zuffa era and become one of the sport’s biggest stars and most dominant fighters? It’s possible, perhaps even probable.