The strange story of Mike Jackson, the man who'll fight the man who might fight CM Punk

Mike Jackson and Sage Northcutt

Put yourself in the UFC’s shoes for a moment. Specifically, put yourself in the middle of the ongoing search for someone former WWE wrestler Phil “CM Punk” Brooks can fight, if and when he’s healthy and ready to do so.

For starters, you’ve got Mickey Gall, the welterweight who caught UFC President Dana White’s eye at a small event in Philadelphia, where he defeated Ron Templeton via first-round submission and then publicly volunteered himself as Punk’s first opponent. But you might be tempted to first find out what this Gall kid can do in the octagon and under the lights, so why not have him fight someone else first to prove he’s ready?

Ah, but there’s the rub. Who can Gall (1-0) fight in an organization like the UFC, where most of his colleagues happen to be experienced, battle-tested pros? For an opponent with comparable experience, you’d likely need to look outside the organization. And if you’re the UFC, you might decide that the best way to find that outside opponent is by asking an outside source whose opinion you trust.

Enter Legacy FC President Mick Maynard, the man whose promotion brought Sage Northcutt up through the amateur ranks and into the pros before he eventually signed with the UFC. You could always ask him if he knows someone who’d be a good opponent for Gall, who the UFC in turn hopes might be a good opponent for Punk. You could always see if he has someone who fits your fairly specific bill, right?

“Yeah,” Maynard told MMAjunkie. “That’s pretty much how it went.”

Fortunately for the UFC, Maynard had a lot of experience with this particular predicament. He promotes everything from MMA to kickboxing, amateur to pro, and he knows how hard it is matching newbies up with one another.

“For a promoter in this position, the hard thing is finding somebody,” Maynard said. “You never really know much about them. When the UFC asked, obviously the first place I was going to go was to the people I did know.”

That’s how the UFC settled on Mike Jackson (0-0 MMA, 0-0 UFC), a 30-year-old boxer, kickboxer and MMA fighter who faces Gall (1-0 MMA, 0-0 UFC) on the UFC Fight Pass prelim portion of UFC 196 on Feb. 6.

A few things to know about Jackson: 1. He prefers to be called Mike, for obvious reasons, though once White announced his booking against Gall by calling him Michael Jackson on TSN’s “Off the Record,” he gave himself over to the inevitable. 2. He’s a photographer and videographer for Legacy FC, in addition to his fighting duties; he also operates his own website, MikeTheTruth.com, which might just be the only combat sports blog to include a “Burlesque” tab. 3. His plan, as of just a few weeks ago, was to try to compete in MMA once, maybe twice over the course of 2016.

“Now it just so happens that my first fight will be my pro debut in the UFC,” Jackson said.

Weird though the situation may be, the good news is that Jackson seems to understand it for what it is – and what it isn’t. He started training in 2008, he said, while a college student at the University of Houston, where he recently earned his degree in sociology with a minor in African-American studies. Like a lot of starry-eyed young fighters, he said, he initially hoped to make it to the UFC some day.

“But I did come to it a little older, and training with high-level guys, I realized maybe I wouldn’t make it to the UFC, but I could still compete and fight for other organizations and just have fun,” Jackson said. “For me, it wasn’t really a money thing. I wasn’t fighting to feed a family or anything like that. I was just fighting because I love to fight.”

The bad news is that even Jackson can’t say for sure what the stakes of his fight with Gall might be for him. According to White, Gall earns the right to welcome CM Punk to the UFC with a win over Jackson. But when asked on Twitter whether Jackson would get the same honor if he comes out on top, White replied simply: “no.”

According to Jackson, that tweet from White was the first he’d heard of the possibility that he and Gall might not be fighting for the same prize.

“When I was first offered the fight, I was told that the winner gets Punk,” Jackson said. “ … But I get it, from a business standpoint. I still think that what it’s going to come down to is, no fight will make sense other than Michael Jackson vs. CM Punk. The name alone carries it.”

His ability to talk up a fight that’s essentially a contest between a series of MMA novices seems to be part of Jackson’s appeal. He’s got plenty of combat sports experience as an amateur – certainly, he has more actual fighting experience than the former pro wrestler Punk, and he recently posted video of his last kickboxing bout on Reddit to prove it – but he’s also not the least bit reluctant to sell himself. That, he said, is one of the big differences between him and Gall, and the reason he thinks White will reconsider that tweet if he wins.

“I’m a personality,” Jackson said. “I have the charisma and the marketing capabilities to make this even bigger. … From what I’ve seen of Mickey Gall, he doesn’t have any of that. He’s just a guy who said, ‘Hey, I want to fight CM Punk.’ Anybody on the street could have done that.”

What comes along with that personality, however, are aspirations that differ from those of most fighters in the UFC. Jackson doesn’t see himself fighting for a UFC title in the future so much as he sees himself as a commentator or analyst, he said. He’s worked behind and in front of the camera for Legacy FC, and his end goal is to build his name and transition into a full-time career on the outside of the cage, he said.

So what happens if he does beat Gall, and what happens if the UFC then gives him the fight against Punk? To look even further into the future, what if he beats Punk and then finds himself with a 2-0 professional record, all in the UFC, with some sudden name value from knocking off an ex-WWE star?

For starters, Jackson said, he’d likely drop down and compete as a lightweight rather than a welterweight in the UFC. But he also knows that both divisions have plenty of tough, skilled fighters, especially in the UFC.

“I might be speaking too soon, but it could be something where I’d have to take a step back after that and see what would be best for the career,” Jackson said.

As for Maynard, who said he considers Jackson a friend and an occasional training partner, and recommended him to the UFC based largely on his striking skills and his personality, he didn’t hesitate to admit that a couple key wins in the UFC could be more dangerous to Jackson in the long run.

“I absolutely worry about that,” Maynard said. “Honestly, Sage Northcutt came from us as well, and I worry about the same thing with him. Obviously, so far, so good for Sage, but I still worry about him. I worry about Mike too. Things like that do concern me.”

For more on UFC 196, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site.