i Cure Cancer Filmmaker/Actor Says: “No thanks Hollywood, I’m not gay.” and “Kanye West Is Right” and “Acidosis is the disease, and alkalinity is the cure!

Today’s guest is Ian Jacklin, author, filmmaker, health coach, activist, actor, kickboxing champ, and basically your typical bullied kid to a longtime successful fighter in so many areas. You can follow him at ianjacklin.com where you can read more about his books and check out his other site icurecancer.com.

Welcome, Ian. 

Thanks Jennifer. I appreciate being on the show.

Yeah, this is gonna be a good one. I was so excited to record this with you. I kept saying, “Yay! It’s Ian week !” Yay! It’s cure cancer week! So thanks for being here and taking this time and let’s kick this off with your story, your life. Start at the beginning because it’s such a great story and the audience needs to hear this, so let us have it.

Okay, sure. Yeah, there’s been some ups and downs for sure. I started off with a big down. I don’t wanna get too melodramatic, but I was adopted. So, you know, I started off in an orphanage.

Luckily, I didn’t spend a lot of time there. I was adopted at a fairly young age and basically we’ll skip right through to that age where kids are cruel in public school and stuff. I wasn’t the biggest victim by any means. I saw many more being hurt a lot more than I was, but, you know, any kind of, you can’t measure pain.

It’s a truthful thing. So, luckily, I got into the martial arts right away and was able to quickly learn how to protect myself and others and right away, I started helping protect the kids that were being bullied as well. I remember, I forget what grade it was, but it was definitely public school. Within the first three or four grades and we had this kid who was mentally challenged, maybe they would say today.

So, he got beat up a lot and I remember watching it and thinking the first time I ever experienced it. I looked up and I saw these kids having a lot of fun.  I think it was the first time I went to camp and I thought that, I want fun, I want that smile on my face. And I looked down and I thought, that’s because they were kicking and spitting on this poor kid.

David, I will never forget his name and I wasn’t big enough yet to do anything about it. I was too small. So I had to just watch it and I knew in that moment though, that’s when I knew my reason to be on planet Earth was because I wanted to be Superman in that moment. I wanted to be Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, I wanted to go over there and help that kid, but I was too small to do so. 

But it set me on a path at that moment to never to be helpless again if I could help it. So, eventually, I got my mom to get me to Karate and stuff and I got stronger and learned how to fight. I ended up protecting that kid for myself and Bill Krista Dule. 

He is from Tecumseh Public School in London, Ontario, Canada.  We both always watched over that guy and tried to make sure that he was left alone. I got into high school and my friend, one of my best friends, got beat up in front of me when we, I think it was the first day of school in grade nine, you know, as if you’re not scared enough as it is going to high school.

I was held back and couldn’t do anything about it. So, I remember I went into the next class and I inscribed onto the desk. It makes me wonder if that desk is still there to this day in H. B. Beal Secondary School. I went to Beal in London, Ontario and I had inscribed into the desk “never again”.

And that was the night I waited, went home and made my mom put me in Karate. Because I just hate being helpless and I don’t like bullies. It’s just horrible, these people. So, I got into Karate and I got really good within two years. I was already a green belt and I was better than most black belts.

And by the age 18, I was the Canadian kickboxing champion.

Did you get to beat anyone up in high school? Did you, you know, just say “Stop that!” and everyone was like “Oh shit, don’t mess with him.” 

Yeah. That’s the thing about Martial Arts, you can always tell if a guy knows how to fight because he’s the quiet one.

It’s the guys that are shooting their mouths off and thinking they’re all tough and cool, that they’re the easiest to beat and fight because they don’t know nothing. They can’t fight, they just talk about a good game. But you stand up to them and they run. 

I really didn’t get into too many fights as a martial artist. Not until I became a bouncer in Los Angeles which I’ll tell you more about those fights later. They had a lot of street fights, but they’re all with drunkards at nightclubs. Basically I was the Canadian champion, kickboxing champion and I felt like I wanted more out of life. I wasn’t happy just going to college or getting my electrical apprenticeship to become an electrician. That’s what I was planning on doing.  

Lennox Lewis who won the gold medal in 1988, his first pro fight was in my hometown because he’s from, a lot of people think he’s from England, but he is actually from Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. My kickboxing gym was in Kitchener, so they took over our gym basically and were training for his first professional fight.

Then they were using some of us, kickboxers, as boxing, spars, spar, sparring, opponents for the boxers because you can never get enough sparring. So, his trainer saw me working out and was like “damn, there’s a white boy that could fight” and I was a kickboxer. He said, “imagine if he really was to focus on his hands.”

So they took me back to London, England with them, and I went into pro boxing for a little while. I was already the Canadian champion in kickboxing. Then I had so many titles. Also, I had fought for the North American title and got a draw at that point and that’s when Lennox showed up in my gym and they’d take me to England with them.

So I got really good with my hands too. But every boxing fight they had set up for me fell through. It was strange. After about a half or a year, I just knew it wasn’t really for me. I’ll just be straight up, I didn’t get along with the trainer, the main trainer of the gym. I liked, loved the assistant trainer and I loved Lennox Lewis himself. He’s a great man. All the guys were all cool, but we just had a personality conflict I guess. So I decided to leave because my head was on the line. You’re literally getting the hell beat idea. When you’re boxing, there’s nothing but punches constantly at my face.

You can tell I got like the boxer’s brow just in those few six months because when I was a kickboxer, I could keep them away with my long legs. I’m six two and I was usually the taller guy when I was fighting and I could keep them away. I didn’t get hit that much. But within six months of pro boxing without even having an actual fight, just the sparring, my face was getting smashed in and I wasn’t happy. 

There’s two kinds of fighters: the kind of fighter that trains well under fear or the other, like myself, that trains well under love. This trainer was a former marine drill sergeant and so he was all about fear and that just didn’t vibe with me. I need to be nurtured and I’d become a better fighter.

So I would’ve been watching, the only thing that I remember good about England, because I was there during the rainy season, which is most of the year, was Baywatch. They had four channels and on one of the channels you could watch Baywatch. I think I should be in California, not London, England. 

When I went back to London, Ontario, where I’m from, I worked the summer, saved up some money, and  I jumped on my motorcycle with a tent and sleeping bag. At the end of the year, I turned 22 on the trip to California and I got there. 

I stayed with a trainer I had back in Canada. His brother lived in California. He’s an old Mohawk Indian guy. I love this guy. He became like a father to me. He was 85 or so when I first moved there. He was a former pro boxer when he was younger and we just hit it off. He was amazing, his name is Les Sickles and he let me stay with them for the first year I was in California where I was getting on my feet, learning where the gyms were, started training and these people started to see who I was. I had my first pro fight there, kickboxing with of all people who’s now one of the most famous guys in the MMA World like Javier Mendez. Javier Mendez trains Cain Velazquez, Daniel Cormier, Luke Rockhold and a bunch of huge big name fighters.

He’s Khabib. Anybody that’s a MMA fan will know these people. So, I fought him and I beat him the first time in California. Anaheim, California was on the undercard of Don “The Dragon” Wilson, who they actually wanted me to fight him that night. 

Now, Don Wilson, again, this is for kickboxing fans, you’ll know him. He was a living legend, longest reigning champion and one of the greatest fighters. They wanted me to fight him that night and I just said “no I’m like 22 years old and I didn’t even hit my man weight.” You don’t get your man weight till you’re like 27. I’m still like a skinny little kid. So I took the next fight available and that was his Javier Mendez kid and I beat him. 

They kept wanting me to fight Don, but we ended up being friends. We trained together. Actually, that’s why I was so good for that fight, because by not taking that fight against him, I got to train with him and we spared each other. So Don “The Dragon” Wilson ended up being my training partner and friend,  because I said no to the fight against him and he put me into movies. He was doing a bunch of movies. So all of a sudden I’m in Hollywood.

 He actually put me in as a starring role too. The first few movies I just had, small fight rolls. The next thing you know, they needed to lead a bad guy in a movie called “Ring of Fire” too, because the other guy that was supposed to come in from Canada couldn’t get his paper straight.

So they let me have the role and that really just got me into it. Now I have two careers, I had an acting career and a professional kickboxing career and there’s no money in professional kickboxing back then. This is just before UFC started, just before the MMA world broke out.  One of the movies I booked was called “Kickboxer 3” and it was in Rio De Janeiro.

So before anybody had ever even heard of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, which is the hit biggest thing in the world now, those are the guys that started MMA, the Gracie family who had the Gracie Jiujitsu, the Brazilian Jiujitsu, came to America and started the UFC because they wanted to prove to the world that their martial arts style was the best and they basically did, because their martial arts style isn’t so much kicking and punching.

It’s stopping others from kicking and punching, getting a hold of them and becoming rattles or a boa constrictor and choking them out. It’s an amazing martial art. I got a blue belt in it myself when I discovered it. So, these guys came to America to show their school and it worked.

Next thing you know, UFC’s the biggest thing ever and I had always dreamed of that as a child. When I was young, I was boxing, kickboxing. I thought, man, boxing’s huge. Kickboxing small. There’s no money in it. Why? Because I thought it was a better sport. It was more fun. It was more weapons, more areas of defense.

It was strategic, it was a better chess game than just using your hands. Now all of a sudden we got kickboxing and wrestling and jiu-jitsu and everything. It’s mixed martial arts. It was amazing. So I got to see and I was a pioneer of that sport. 

They say the kickboxers were the pioneers of MMA because we took it from boxing to kicking and punching and then the Jiu-Jitsu guys and the wrestlers came in and added it all together. So that was great to see in my lifetime that a martial artist could actually make a living by fighting. Because when I was fighting, I always had to work as a construction guy, bouncer cab, whatever, driving cab. But whatever it took, I do my 40 hours a week working and then I’d also be in the gym training.

So, I mean, we were the pioneers. We worked really hard for that and basically I had enough kickboxing fights and I was starting to lose them too, because I was doing movies. I was trying to get in shape and do a movie at the same time, and it’s just impossible. 

So, eventually I did win. I like fighting for the world championship. I fought Javier Mendez because he was so upset that I beat him the first time because he was unbeaten. I remember the first time I heard his record, I was getting across the ring from him waiting to go to fight with him and I heard he’s 10 wins with 10 KOs.

I’m like, what? They didn’t tell me that. That happened to me more than once. When I left Canada, I had great handlers in Canada, Ronde and Jimmy Fields were my handlers in Canada. But when I came to the States, I was just cannon fodder. But I was such a good fighter that I had always beat the guys that they set me up to lose to.

Then I ended up with a great trainer, Ruben Urquidez, aka “Benny The Jet” Urquidez’s brother trained me. So then I was in good hands and I fought for the world title against Javier again and he beat me that time. So he and I are one and one and we’re great friends to this day, which is nice because whenever I’m in San Jose, I go to his a.k.a. martial arts gym and I get to meet all the champions today. Like I met Cain Velazquez, I got to school him on vaccines and all his guys because I was up there. 

There’s a segue. 

Yeah, there’s a segue. That’s where all this was in 15 or 16 when we were battling forced vaccinations on children in California to go to school. I think it was 15.

So I did everything I could to go up to the Capitol in California, in Sacramento and San Jose, and him being a great man and a popular man, I really wanted to help these children cure cancer. I know that vaccines are very bad for them. I kind of skipped over the whole medical side.

We’ll get to that in a minute but to correlate it with kickboxing and everything, he is a popular guy. He’s got a lot of press. So I went to him and he knew that vaccines were bad because one of his children, or at least one of them, was injured by a vaccine. So he was on my side. He let me go up there.

We set up a booth and had people come in and sign. We got signatures to fight this forced vaccination in California, which we lost. Of course, Jerry Brown, this scumbag governor, won, and they put in the mandatory vaccinations, and thanks to that, I don’t know how many thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands but a lot of kids got autism and/or died in California because we lost the referendum. It was 277. Was it? I forget now, but that’s just preparation. What I’m about to this day is I’m an activist more than anything. I’m stepping up and fighting for the kids because they can’t fight for themselves and their rights.