Gulf High Grad's Pro MMA Debut is Tonight

Gulf High grad Ladarious Jackson is fighting in his first professional mixed martial arts event Friday, June 14.

Jackson faces Nick Smith in a welterweight match at the Xtreme Fighting Championships at the USF Sun Dome in Tampa. The match is a preliminary fight at the event.

“I feel confident,” Jackson said a couple days before the fight. “I feel ready to execute my game plan come Friday. …I’m more nervous than anything to be honest with you. This is huge.”

Smith is 2-0 in professional matches and is probably “licking his chops” in anticipation of “easy meat.”

“I think that he is going to have a reality check,” Jackson said.  

Jackson is a high school wrestling champ, rising above a troubled childhood that was documented in the Tampa Bay Times. He won two state wrestling championships while at Gulf High.

He did that despite a rough and tumble childhood.

Jackson is one of 10 children born to Lawanda Jackson. Only two share the same father, he said.

Lawanda was serving a jail sentence on a charge of selling cocaine when she gave birth to Ladarious.

When she was out of jail, she raised him.  Other times, other family members raised him.

Lawanda has been arrested since Jackson was born, and he still remembers seeing her in a cop car.

It bothers him and makes him angry.

He said he doesn’t expect to see his family members at this match.

“I don’t know how my mom feels,” he said. “I feel like I’ve accomplished a lot overcoming her.”

Jackson became a turnaround student and graduated from Gulf High in 2011. He then attended Indiana Tech University for a time, but dropped out and returned to the New Port Richey area. In 2012, he stopped into Gator MMA gym in Port Richey. Daniel Blevins, the owner of Gator MMA, became a friend and coach. He even let Jackson live at the gym for a time.

Jackson now works out at Four Corners gym in Port Richey.

Florida regulations requires a fighter to participate in five amateur MMA matches before they participate in a professional fight. Jackson says he has participated in six amateur fights and won them all.

In addition to fighting, Jackson, who now lives in Moon Lake, has been working at Harold Seltzers Steakhouse at the Gulf View Square Mall in Port Richey. He works in the bakery and and buses tables there, and he says some of his coworkers will be attending the Sun Dome match, as well as Blevins.   

Jackson has long wanted to start fighting in professional matches.

“It’s my right,” he said.  “I’ve earned this right to be a pro athlete.”

Want Tickets to the Collision Course XFC Event?

You can buy tickets at Be a Fan Tickets or the USF Sun Dome Box office. The overall event begins at 7 p.m. June 14, but the doors open at 6:30 p.m. 

The Collision Course event will air at 9 p.m. AXS TV, but it’s unclear if Jackson’s fight will be part of the broadcast.

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