A recent post by Eric Raskin on The Ring Blog features a great article on Julius and John Jackson.

Julius and John Jackson are making their dreams -- and Dad’s -- come true
Posted May. 31, 2009 at 08:55pm
By Eric Raskin

For two weeks last summer, Beijing was as crowded and congested as any city in the world. But of the nearly 20 million people filling all of the homes and hotels, there wasn’t one who appreciated being there more than Julian Jackson did.

Jackson, after all, had waited nearly 30 years for this.

His Olympic dream was delayed almost three decades. But in 2008, it finally came true.

Jackson was supposed to compete in the 1980 Olympics in Moscow as a representative of the U.S. Virgin Islands, but then the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and 65 countries boycotted the Summer Games. Jackson didn’t get to fight for an Olympic medal. Instead he turned pro and, if you’re a boxing fan, you know the rest: 55 wins, 49 knockouts, three title reigns, and a legacy that will live on thanks to all of the people with time to compile kayo montages and post them on YouTube.

But his legacy will also live on for another reason. Make that two reasons. They’re the reasons that brought “The Hawk” to Beijing for his overdue Olympic debut.

Julius Jackson boxed as a light heavyweight in Beijing and John Jackson fought as a welterweight. Julian worked his sons’ corners as the head coach of the Virgin Islands’ national team.

“Finally, I got a chance to go to the Olympics, I got a chance to step into the ring,” Jackson said. “Oh my goodness, the thrills, the emotions, the adrenaline was high, everything was just flowing. Man, I mean, sometimes, you don’t have words to give to what you feel, the excitement. I was there in the shadows of my sons, and it was more special because they knew what it meant to me, and so it meant a lot more for them.”

Neither son made much noise in Beijing, Julius losing in the first round to eventual silver medalist Kenny Egan while John won his first fight but lost his second to bronze winner Jungjoo Kim. But they’re trying to make up for that in the pro ranks, just as their father did. Both Jackson boys advanced their records to 3-0 on Saturday night, helping draw a crowd of 2,000 to the UVI Sports & Fitness Center in the St. Thomas. Fighting at super middleweight, 21-year-old Julius dispatched Jamal Williams with a right cross in just 96 seconds. And in a junior middleweight bout, 20-year-old John took care of business with a right uppercut at 1:29 of the second round against Idelfonso Soto.

They say punchers are born, while boxers can be made. That maxim certainly holds true with the Jackson brothers. While Julius did a score first-round blastout over the weekend, he’s really not a puncher; he’s a technical boxer who has learned, and is working toward perfecting, his craft. It’s John who shows shades of his old man as a puncher. And it’s also John who always seemed destined for the sport.

“When they were much younger, I had a lot of boxing magazines,” Julian recalled. “And John, I knew he was going to be a boxer because he’d be this little infant looking through the pages, and when you tried to take the magazine from him, he would go crazy, he would hold onto it. And you’d give it back to him and he would stop crying, no more ranting and raving. And I realized that he was looking in there and it seemed as if he was just so into it. He was just really interested in boxing.”

Dad wasn’t the only one who recognized that he had a natural fighter on his hands.

“My mom said she knew it all along,” John said. “She could see it in me from when I was a baby.”

With Julius, it was less obvious. He was the more studious of the two boys and showed more of an inclination toward school and less of an inclination toward the Sweet Science. For about 4½ years in the mid-’90s, the Jacksons lived in Las Vegas while their father was in the late stages of his fighting career, and none of the boys (including oldest brother Julian Jr.) entered a boxing gym. Actually, they were all good baseball players. Then when Julius was 12 and John was 11, they moved back to the Virgin Islands and soon gave boxing a try.

For John, it was serious from the start, and it wasn’t long before he gave up baseball. For Julius, who was a bit overweight, boxing was just supposed to be a way to get into shape. But he developed skills and his dad asked him if he wanted to try competing, so he gave it a shot.

Julius was still doing well in school, though, and seemed to have other paths he could follow in life, so his mother wasn’t overjoyed with the idea of him becoming a boxer. When Julius was 17 and preparing to fight in the Caribbean Games, she made him promise to quit the sport after that one last tournament. But then Julius went and won the gold.