As Gary Jacobs contemplated throwing himself off the Erskine Bridge, a voice shouted: ‘Don’t dae it’

He remembers everything. ‘Every fight. Every round,’ says Gary Jacobs, once a British, European and Commonwealth welterweight champion. There is a justifiable hint of pride in this.

He also remembers the turmoil after his career ended. On a cold winter’s day in 2003, Jacobs drove to the Erskine Bridge. His outstanding boxing career was long over and subsequent businesses had failed.

‘I was a junkie and a heavy drinker scrambling around to keep a roof over my family’s head,’ he says in his remarkable book, Fightback, a relentlessly honest chronicle of triumph and despair. ‘I just couldn’t take it any longer.’

He was saved by the unlikeliest of Glasgow moments. A white van slowed down as it passed him and a voice shouted: ‘Don’t dae it.’ Jacobs didn’t. His eyes moved from the Clyde below and he returned to his battered car. He decided to fight on.

More than 20 years later, he sits, energised and articulate, in a friend’s home in the south side of Glasgow. He is telling the compelling story of a life lived but nearly lost.

‘Listen, there are few times you contemplate doing things like that,’ he says of that awful day on the bridge. ‘You think about it. But it didn’t happen. There were lows but there were so many highs.

‘It is difficult to explain. Many people will not understand it. They live likes like this.’ His hand moves in a steady motion, describing a stable pattern. ‘But my life was like this,’ he says, hand moving up and down frenetically. ‘Up there, down there. The highs are high and the lows are very low.’

There were disappointments in his 12-year boxing career. He fought 53 times, winning 45. ‘I was robbed a few times,’ he says bluntly. 

He also fought a contender for best pound-for-pound fighter ever in Pernell Whitaker in 1995 for the world title. He lost in a unanimous decision. He shakes his head at the memory. There may be regret but there has to be immense pride in that fight.

Thirty years on, at 59, Jacobs says: ‘You only realise what you have done years later. You see your boxing legacy intact, particularly on social media.’

He quietly addresses life after the ring. ‘It was devastating,’ he reflects on walking away from professional boxing. Cocaine and alcohol deadened that pain. ‘That was escapism. Weird, wild. You say of drugs: “Wow, where does that stuff come from. Wow, it’s magic”. That doesn’t last long, however.’

He adds: ‘A lot of the real pain happened outside the ring. When it all stops, you are on your own. I made some terrible decisions. I have some great people around me, though. My family stayed with me. I am ashamed of what I put my family through. My kids have to read about it.’

However, they can also read of a dramatic recovery. After stints commentating and being a boxing mentor, he now has a personal training business.

‘Health is everything. I train every day. I have good clients who are at the top of their professions. That has kept me on the straight and narrow. I look at that and smile because they know I got to the top. Like-minded people tend to work well together.’

He is grateful for their support. He trains at the gym at Linn Products, at Waterfoot, near Glasgow. It is the company of one of his mentors, Ivor Tiefenbrun, who sponsored Jacobs generously when he turned pro. 

‘He gave me a flat to live in at Swiss Cottage in London for eight years,’ says Jacobs. ‘I also stayed free at the London flat of Stuart Cosgrove, the broadcaster.’

This gratitude extends to life itself. ‘I woke up this morning. Another chance to fix it,’ he says of his philosophy. ‘Life is pretty stable. I am just getting on with it, trying to build a business again.’

He also seeks to help others, not just on improving their fitness. ‘One of my clients is a leading lawyer and we got together to have a four-week trial period of boxing in Barlinnie,’ he says. 

‘That was about six months ago and I believe it went well, but the authorities have not yet got back to us. The prisoners loved it and I think it is worthwhile. Violence contains violence.’

It did for the young Jacobs. ‘Aye, I was a rowdy child,’ he says. His father was a successful businessman and he moved homes regularly on the south side in Glasgow and even once briefly emigrated to Australia with his family. ‘I went to a lot of schools,’ says Jacobs. ‘I had a few fights. I suppose I felt you had to mark your territory.’

His introduction to boxing came when he was 15.

‘My dad came in and said to me one day: “If you think you can fight, what about boxing?”

‘I told him I had no interest in boxing.

‘He said: “You can get 50 quid a fight.”

‘I said: “Where’s the gloves?”’

This decision led to an ascent to the top of boxing, eventually bringing titles and the status of No 1 contender for the world welterweight title. But it was always a battle.

‘I thought I was handy. But when I walked into a boxing club, I realised on that first day that I couldn’t fight.’

He learned, particularly with the guidance of Maurice Lewis, a boxing obsessive.

‘It all seemed to happen quickly,’ he says. ‘Suddenly this wee Jewish boy is fighting at Madison Square Garden.’

He is referring to the clash with Buddy McGirt, an eventual Hall of Famer, in New York in 1989.

‘The circumstances around that fight were strange,’ says Jacobs. ‘I was supposed to fight someone else in New York on the Thursday. But something happened to the McGirt fight scheduled for the Sunday. I think his opponent pulled out. I was offered the fight. I couldn’t refuse. It was 15 times the money to fight on the Sunday.’

He lost on points to a fine boxer. However, the decision to take the fight was not just a solid financial decision but a mark of Jacobs’ defiant stance of always taking on the best.

There is no better example of this trait than his bout with Whitaker in Atlantic City in August 1995 for the lineal welterweight world championship.

The loss by a unanimous decision still irks him.

‘I still don’t think I lost any of the first six rounds,’ he says. ‘I chased him, I attacked him, I hunted him down. I had him down, though they said it was a slip. I got a public warning with 20 seconds to go. That’s right, 20 seconds to go. Somebody must have thought it was close. Then he got me down. I lost that round 10-6.’

He has stepped away from the fight game in recent years. He once helped boxers but no longer has the appetite for it.

‘A lot of kids think they know more than you,’ he says. ‘That’s fine, but it’s not worth my time. Somebody once said to me: “Remember I’m your boss”.

‘I said: “Can I get a wage rise, then, because I haven’t taken a penny off you”.’

There is just time before the bell sounds on the interview to reflect on his best moment in the ring. He grabs his phone and flicks through, alighting on a clip.

‘This is my finest hour. I’ll show you it,’ he says. Film runs of his second fight with Ludovic Soto, in February 1993. It was generally agreed that Jacobs had been robbed of victory in the first fight with the southpaw from Guadeloupe months earlier.

‘I battered him in the first fight in Paris,’ he says. ‘Soto lived in France and got the decision. I went to his backyard in Paris for the second fight.’

He puts his phone in front of my eyes. It shows Soto being bludgeoned in the eighth round. ‘I was knackered after that,’ says Jacobs, smiling. The video moves suddenly into the ninth. ‘He had 28 fights, no defeats,’ says Jacobs. A devastating right hand changes that record. Soto lies prone and Jacobs wheels away.

I look up and away from the events of 1993. The Jacobs of 2025 stands before me. It is a pose that seems natural for the perennial fighter. He has been down but he always gets back up.

Fightback, by Gary Jacobs and Colin Grant, is published by Empire. For confidential support, call the Samaritans on 116 123 or visit samaritans.org