Jackson was born on April 14, 1886 in the Bronx, New York. The family lived at 1310 Brooke Avenue. His father, Louis, a worker in a chemical plant, died of tuberculosis when Sid was just six years old. His mother then took up work in the garment district. Sid and his brothers split time between attending school and scraping out a living. He spent a stint working as a tailor’s apprentice.
One day, a friend showed Sid a magazine featuring pictures of boxers. Sid instantly understood his calling in life. He began boxing at the age of 11. A report from 1943 claims Jackson first fought as a 13 year old in Cleveland representing the Bronx Club and won by knockout. Most sources claim he turned pro at the age of 18. There was a Sidney Jackson who fought in Hawaii as a middleweight along side his brother Nigel beginning in 1903, but our Jackson campaigned as a bantamweight and a featherweight. Contemporary accounts of his pro career have been hard to come by.
In 1914, Jackson joined a a group of American boxers on an overseas tour. While in Glasgow, Jackson injured his thumb and was unable to fight. He, along with fellow boxer and friend Frank Gill, left Scotland to travel throughout Europe. It was an unfortunate time to traverse the continent. On June 28, Gavrilo Princip shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austrian-Hungarian throne, and his wife. A month later, war broke out. Jackson and Gill were already in Russia “to see the bears walking down the streets.”
No bears in sight, the duo kept traveling east at the suggestion of the American Consulate in St. Petersburg. They ran out of money in Tashkent. Both sent telegrams back home to the States, but only Gill received his money and left; Jackson did not.
Boxing was virtually unknown in what was then called Turkestan, so Jackson worked as a tailor at the Yaushev Garment Making Firm. At first, he knew no one. He lived those early years in a one-room mud hut with a roommate. In 1917, revolution swept Russia and its surrounding areas. When the Basmachi movement threatened the Bolshevik takeover, Jackson volunteered and fought the anti-communist rebels with a brigade that included a mishmash of ethnicities and nationalities. He served for four years and was wounded twice in battle.
After the war, Jackson settled down back in a rapidly industrializing Tashkent, which was then the largest city in the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. He got a job as a sports instructor at the former Romanov Palace, a relic of the czar era built in 1891 for the grandson of Nicolas I. From there, Jackson began teaching boxing, but it wasn’t so simple.
The club didn’t have any boxing equipment and no way to get some. So as one writer explained, “Sidney made sport equipment for classes with his own hands from improvised materials. He made a makeshift ring from [an] old ship’s tarpaulin, hemmed three pairs of old gloves, and sewed several new pairs of leather and horsehair from a local slaughterhouse. The trainer made punching bags from the canvas bags here as well.” He stuffed seaweed in one of the old gloves to serve as padding.
Jackson didn’t just coach boxing, but introduced track and field, basketball, and swimming to the area. He advertised the sporting association by posting flyers on fences and trees throughout the city of Tashkent.
In 1922, he finally received his exit papers from the United States, but by that time he had made a life in Tashkent. He soon gained Soviet citizenship. In the mid-1920s, the USSR banned boxing, but the sport was soon reinstated with only amateur rules permitted. At the age of 43, Sidney married a Russian Jewish woman named Bertha. They had two kids, a son named Leo and a daughter named Paina. Leo started boxing at 11 and rose to become a top amateur in the country. After fighting, Leo became a respected surgeon while officiating boxing bouts on the side.
In the 1930s, Sidney Jackson decided to go to school. In his 50s, he earned a degree in English and served as a professor at the Tashkent Institute of Foreign Languages. He assumed the name Sidney Lvovich Jackson.
When the Soviets entered World War II, several of Jackson’s pupils made worldwide headlines. One was Leonid Mesh, who knocked out cold a German soldier with an uppercut and then took him prisoner. Another, Ivan Treyakov, put together a left uppercut-right hook combination that destroyed another German soldier.
After the war, Jackson continued to teach boxing at the Palace of Pioneers where he always rode his bicycle to work. One of his prized post-war proteges was Valeri Popenchenko, who not only won Olympic gold in the middleweight division at the 1964 Olympics, but also captured the Val Barker trophy as the most outstanding boxer at the Games.
Throughout his career, but particularly as he aged, Jackson basked in the unwavering success of his pupils. “My father was both very kind and very tough,” recalled his daughter Paina. “He loved people. That was one of his main features. And people reciprocated. He had that kind of aura.
Another decorated disciple, Rinat Yusupov, began training with Jackson in 1964. “I thank my lucky stars. He made a man of me,” he said.
Jackson taught Jewish boxers Vladimir Agaronov, Iosif Budman, and Eli and Gershon Luxembourg, among many others. The Luxembourgs moved to Israel and their gym in Jerusalem featured a prominent portrait of Jackson. “Jackson passed on to us that attitude to respect other people and other nationalities,” Gershon explained. “Among the boys there [at Jackson’s gym], there were lots of Uzbek kids training, lots of Jewish kids, lots of Russians, Tatars, everyone. We were all together in that melting pot… We all felt the same love and care from that man.”
World champion and Olympic silver medalist Rufat Riskiyev said that Jackson taught him his “stance, the right way to punch, footwork, good breathing.” Jackson focused on a boxer’s breathing as a way to increase their stamina.
“Among his students were heroes of the Soviet Union, PhDs, candidates of science,” said Uzbek champ and coach Mirsalikh Sagatov. “He used to say, ‘Boxing is a mental form of sport. In the ring you have to think.’ And this attitude of his, his words, passed into those people for their whole lives.”
Sidney died on January 5, 1966 at the age of 79. He was buried at the Botkin Street Cemetery in Tashkent.
Uzbeks consider their teacher to be equal to their father, and Sidney Jackson was the father of Uzbek boxing. Over one hundred years after his arrival, Jackson’s legacy, not limited to boxing, endures throughout the country.
Sources
“Old Time American Fighter Teaches Soviet Kids the Art.” The Daily Worker. Jun. 24, 1943. Pg. 6.
Piklicka-Wilczewska, Agnieszka. “In Uzbekistan’s Corner, Muscle and Pride.” Eurasianet. May 1, 2020.
Riordan, Jim. “Sidney Jackson: An American in Russia’s Boxing Hall of Fame. Journal of Sport History. Spring 1993. Pgs. 49-56.