@casdas , you need these pics for your collection? If you never saw Jimmy wrestle in person or on TV, you really missed watching a special wrestler at heavyweight.
Tramel's ScissorTales: Oklahoma State wrestling legend Jimmy Jackson was a gentle giant
Berry TramelOklahoman
Before the NCAA put in pound limits for heavyweights in the 1980s, college wrestling was the land of giants.
Iowa State’s Chris Taylor, 6-foot-5, 412 pounds, won two NCAA championships as a heavyweight, 1972 and 1973.
North Carolina State’s Tab Thacker, 6-4, 450, won the 1984 NCAA title.
But OSU’s Jimmy Jackson, 6-6, 350, was the greatest giant of them all.
Jackson, a three-time NCAA champion (1976-78) and a U.S. Olympian as a 19-year-old, was a giant in stature and a giant in the history of OSU. The Cowboys’ best heavyweight ever and one of the wrestling school’s greatest competitors, any weight.
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Alas, Jackson died in 2008 of at age 51, of diabetes and congestive heart failure. That’s a trend. Taylor died at age 29, Thacker at age 45.
But some of Jackson’s former teammates will be in Stillwater this weekend to hail the gentle giant.
“He was really a big Teddy Bear of a guy,” said Lee Roy Smith, executive director of the Hall of Fame and a 1980 NCAA champion for OSU. “But I’ll tell you, when he was in attack mode, you had a Kodiak bear on your hands.”
Jackson’s career record at OSU was 88-9-2, with 44 pins. Six of those career losses came as a freshman. Jackson in his final three years at OSU was 69-3-1, with three NCAA titles.
In 1978, Jackson and Wisconsin’s Lee Kemp became the first African-Americans to win three NCAA wrestling titles.
For such a big man, Jackson was incredibly agile. Multiple teammates recalled one of the most amazing things they’ve ever seen on a wrestling mat.
Oregon State’s Larry Bielenberg, the 1975 NCAA heavyweight champion, grabbed Jackson’s leg, lifted it and a takedown seemed imminent. Bielenberg eventually got Jackson’s leg all the way to Bielenberg’s shoulder. But Jackson, at 350 pounds, bounced around on one leg for 20 seconds, like a ballerina, before Bielenberg eventually tired. Takedown averted.
“No other heavyweight I’ve ever seen had that kind of flexibility,” said Jim Shields, Jackson’s predecessor as the OSU heavyweight and who, as Tommy Chesbro’s graduate assistant, recruited Jackson to Stillwater out of Grand Rapids, Michigan. “Everybody marveled. He didn’t panic.”
He wasn’t just brute strength. Jackson was a technical wrestler.
“He liked to grab you and play around with you and kind of show you he could do it,” Smith said.
The Jackson stories are legion. He once was pickpocketed at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. Jackson, at 350 pounds, ran down the thief, tackled him and waited for police to arrive.
Cowboy football coaches continually tried to get Jackson to try the gridiron, but he wasn’t interested. The Dallas Cowboys tried, too.
But Jackson preferred the mat. And he became an icon.
OSU classmate Daryl Monasmith recalled that one of his and Jackson’s first matches and their last match at old Gallagher Hall are two of the most revered moments in OSU wrestling history.
In Jackson’s first Bedlam dual, he and OU heavyweight Bill Kalkbrenner famously got into a shoving match. Kalkbrenner’s brother ran onto the mat like something out of pro wrestling, a Cowboy teammate responded, the Sooner wrestling team charged and out of the stands came OSU football players. Soon enough, a wild melee ensued involving fans and competitors. When order was restored, Kalkbrenner took down Jackson, but Jackson countered and pinned Kalkbrenner. Gallagher went nuts.
But not as nuts as the 1978 Big Eight Tournament, when 190-pounder Monasmith upset Iowa State national champion Frank Santana, giving the Cowboys a shot at beating the top-ranked Cyclones for the title. Old-timers still say that’s the loudest Gallagher ever has roared, including stories of popped light bulbs.
The building shook for 10 minutes, then it shook again when Jackson pinned Iowa State’s Tom Waldon in 22 seconds to secure the Big Eight championship.
“It was an awesome time,” said Monasmith.
But Monasmith said Jackson was so much more than a wrestler. He recalls Jackson as a fun-loving, low-ego personality.
“He truly was a fun guy,” Monasmith said.
Shields recalls taking Jackson to a youth clinic in Alabama, and Jackson participating in a tug o’ war, basically against the entire group, before he turned into the rope himself, with kids hanging onto and pulling both arms and both legs. Shields still laughs at the memory; Jackson was laughing, too.
After his OSU days, Jackson tried some pro wrestling, then returned to Michigan. He was not an extravert. His teammates regret not seeing more of him.
But they remember him. Oh, how they remember him, and old-time OSU fans never will forget the agile giant.
“It’ll be great to honor him and his memory,” Monasmith said. “Jimmy deserves this. That’s the bottom line.”
