Well, there’s the answer. For all the charisma and flash, there’s been hard work behind it and, more importantly, sacrifice. And not over the last couple years, but since he first stepped on the mats when he was six years old. That’s a lot of years to not be like the other kids, teenagers and young adults.
“I’ve had to sacrifice a lot of friendships so that I can keep moving forward and not let them pull me down,” said Tackett. “I’ve had to sacrifice partying. I did it for a year or so when I was struggling with identity issues when I was 17, but it didn’t last long. I had to sacrifice dating girls and going out with girls with just too much time and investment. I had to sacrifice not fitting in, making people think I was cool because I was able to take a really fat rip off of something or I was able to chug a beer, and then I had to sacrifice just really doing what I wanted to do. I couldn’t do what I wanted to do; I had to do what the book said is right: sleep right, eat right, take your vitamins and supplements, be healthy, train smart. And it’s like nobody wants to do those things, but I had to learn how to do those things and I learned how to be smart in those areas. I got a lot of injuries as well throughout my career, so I had to learn how to sacrifice training. So right now, at the moment, I’m only training like three to four times a week in jiu jitsu. And then all my other training sessions are like physical therapy, weight training, yoga and drilling, things that don’t beat me up. And that was really hard because I want to scrap, I want to train hard, but I had to sacrifice that in order to keep my body healthy. So yeah, I mean that’s all this life is; it’s just sacrifices. But yeah, it’s been fun. I’ve enjoyed it for sure. I would never pick any other lifestyle.”