Who Is Mike Jackson, CM Punk's UFC 225 Opponent?

CM Punk will finally have his second official mixed martial arts (MMA) fight as it was confirmed Thursday night he will be facing Mike Jackson at UFC 225, which takes place June 9 in Chicago.

Punk (0-1) made his highly-anticipated octagon debut when he took on young prospect Mickey Gall (4-1) at UFC 203 in September 2016. With a lot of eyes on the former WWE champion, it was unfortunately a debut to forget as Punk was dominated right from the get-go with Gall taking him down and finishing him with a rear naked submission choke just over two minutes into the first round.

The manner of the defeat led many to question whether the UFC was a step too far as Punk had never even competed at the amateur level prior to the lopsided defeat.

But with the 39-year-old back in training at Roufusport along with UFC 225 being announced as the first pay-per-view event to be held in Chicago, Punk, a native of the Windy City, immediately hinted on Twitter about a possible return as he will now take on Jackson 21 months after his debut.

Like Punk, Jackson is also 0-1 after notably making his UFC debut against Gall in February 2016 as a warm-up opponent for the New Jersey native. "The Truth" suffered the same fate as he would only last 45 seconds before being finished by a rear naked choke submission as well.

Not a full time mixed martial artist by any means, Jackson is a Houston native who is a photographer and videographer for MMA promotion Legacy FC while he also runs an MMA-geared website.

Unlike Punk, however, the 33-year-old does have some combat experience as he amassed a 4-0 record in professional boxing from 2013 to 2017, according to BoxRec. As per Sherdog, he also holds a lone amateur loss in MMA to Nick Felder as well as a Muay Thai loss last year to Jeremie Holloway in an XKO event according to Tapology.

A much better match-up for Punk than Gall was, Jackson also has history with the Chicago native. According to him, Punk called him "a can" backstage, which did not please Jackson one bit. In February last year, he even called for himself to be Punk's next opponent as he believes there is enough "bad blood" to make a fight that people would want to see.

"You're trying to make money, and that's really the only reason we're bringing this guy in in the first place, and it seems what's best would be to allow me to fight him," Jackson said. "For someone who has zero fight experience to call me a can, that was probably the most offensive thing that I've heard throughout this entire ordeal. So, he wants to fight one more time at least, and I figure, throw me in there."

"They only have a little bit of promotional material, you don't have to worry about looking for another fighter to fight CM Punk. I think he and I, we have enough history and a little bit of bad blood that we can just make the money fight right here, right now. Let's see who the real can is here, and let's make some money doing it."

It is not known at this point where Punk vs Jackson will feature on what is looking to be a stacked UFC 225 card, however, it could be a great selling point for the preliminaries. But with Punk contributing to the 450,000 pay-per-view buys UFC 203 made as well as being a local draw, it is entirely possible he fights on the main card as well.