Daniel Jacobs: Rising from the Ring of Pain to Glory"

After defeating Cleaver in mid-March 2011, Jacobs traveled to Iraq for the USO with Golden Boy Promotions fighters. He was still reeling from a disastrous loss to Dmitry Pirog on July 31, 2010. Fighting on the undercard of the Juan Manuel Marquez-Juan Diaz rematch in Las Vegas, he was knocked out in the fifth round.

- "After returning home, strange things started happening. I remember riding my bike and the pedals started skipping."

Other symptoms began to emerge that pointed to more serious problems. Jacobs began to experience uncontrollable muscle spasms in his left leg. His girlfriend, Natalie Stevens, with whom he was raising his three-year-old son, Nathaniel, also began to notice strange things happening to him.

"Danny kept saying it felt like there were needles in his feet," Natalie recalls. "We didn't know what was going on. About a week later, these spasms started. His leg would just start twitching, and after that, he couldn't walk."

But Jacobs persisted. He jokingly showed Natalie how to run with stiff legs. The doctor he first consulted said the problem was a pinched nerve in his back. Psychologically, Jacobs, a 24-year-old world-class athlete, found it hard to admit that something was wrong. Because if something really was wrong, how would he be able to run and train and spar the way he did?

In April 2011, Jacobs was confined to a wheelchair.

“I couldn’t understand how you couldn’t lift your leg; I’d mentally lift it, but it wouldn’t move,” Jacobs says. “The amazing thing was, I didn’t feel any pain. I felt a tingling sensation in my legs, but it was more annoying than painful. It all happened so fast that I didn’t have time to be scared. I just didn’t have time to fully process what had happened. It was like the Twilight Zone. I never doubted for a second that I would get over it eventually.”

A few weeks later, in mid-April, Jacobs became much worse. His godmother, Dorothea Perry, tried to contact him. When Jacobs did not answer the phone, she rushed to his house and demanded that the doorman let her in. That day, Jacobs had to pull himself up to open the door.

“I still didn’t understand,” Jacobs said. “I was taking the prescribed pills, which I thought would take the pain away and cure whatever it was. But when I went to see my neurologist, she realized something was wrong and sent me for an emergency MRI. She knew it was critical, and I had to get it sorted out.”

Jacobs was taken to Brooklyn Hospital for a battery of tests, which revealed a massive tumor in his back.

“It was like an alien growing inside him,” Natalie recalls. “Something had to be done fast because the tumor had wrapped around his spinal cord. It was weird, scary, like it was feeding on Danny, sucking his life out. It was like it wanted to kill him, like it had a motive, and it just kept growing and growing. It grew so fast that the doctors had to operate. If it had kept growing, it could have caused brain damage. Miraculously, Danny survived it all.”

When Jacobs was told about cancer, he didn't think about his life, he was preoccupied with something else

"The doctors told me I had a tumor in my back, and the first thing I thought was boxing, that my career was over; and that's when I got scared," Jacobs said. "The tumor was about the size of a baseball, and it was like tentacles around my spinal cord. I couldn't feel anything below the waist."

On May 18, 2011, Jacobs underwent surgery at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital to remove the tumor, which turned out to be cancerous.

“It was a test,” Jacobs said. “I felt a lot of disappointment and pain. Unfortunately, we take it out on the people closest to us. Natalie had been through a lot. But she understood that this was how I got through my pain. She became my rock, as was my godmother Dorothea. She was there for Natalie every day and believed in me. And I kept asking, ‘Why me?’ There was nothing that could be done, but I kept believing that I could get through this.”

Little by little, step by step, Jacobs got his way. At first, he needed help with even the simplest things: taking a bath, going to the toilet, eating. Several times, on sleepless nights, he was overcome with fear for his future. But he wasn’t going to share this with Natalie. He began to remember the pleasant little things. And it was the thought of returning to the ring that inspired him.

- While Jacobs was recovering from surgery, he kept asking, "Why did this happen to me, why now?" He trained with Roach. He signed with Al Haymon. He was promoted. He felt invincible again.

Jacobs now believes his example serves as a huge inspiration to others.

“I cheated death,” he says. “What I went through made me hungrier for life, and I appreciate it even more. Before this happened, coaches had to coax me into doing things like running and training. Now the games are over for me. It’s like a second chance. It’s a gift that can be taken away at any moment.”