Staff photo / R. Michael Semple From left, exhibition boxer J.R. Jackson, a detective sergeant with the Poland Township Police Department, Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini and exhibition boxer Patrick McGlone, a Youngstown firefighter, pose for a photo during a news conference Friday promoting the second annual Fight Night, which Mancini is organizing. Proceeds from the event will benefit the Clarence R. Smith Jr. Family Mahoning Valley First Responder Wellness Center in Boardman.

BOARDMAN — Later this month, detective Sgt. J.R. Jackson intends to step up to the plate, though he has no intention of getting a hit.

Instead, he has every intention of being hit.

“It’s all for a good cause,” Jackson, an officer with the Poland Township Police Department, said Friday afternoon at the Clarence R. Smith Jr. Family Mahoning Valley First Responder Wellness Center in Boardman. “I did not want it to fall by the wayside.”

Jackson, who has served 23 years with the department, was referring to being part of the second annual Fight Night on Jan. 23, an evening that legendary former boxer Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini had planned. On Friday at the center, Mancini also outlined details of the evening, noting that proceeds will go to the wellness facility that serves first responders.

Specifically, Jackson will be competing against Patrick McGlone of the Youngstown Fire Department in the Battle of the Badge amateur boxing match.

Despite a mere month’s worth of training — and a longtime passive attitude toward boxing — Jackson expressed no nervousness about getting into the ring to spar with McGlone in a few weeks. During his short training stint, the longtime law enforcement official has made a concerted effort to soak up as much boxing knowledge and skill as possible so that in a matter of weeks, he will be “at the top of my game,” he added.

For his part, McGlone, who has served 11 years with the Youngstown Fire Department, will take a bit more experience into the ring than his opponent. The firefighter was in a boxing match about seven years ago at the Covelli Centre in Youngstown and is being further groomed for the upcoming bout at the South Side Boxing Club while working with longtime trainer Jack Loew, he said.

“I’m very excited. It’s a good cause, a good venue,” McGlone added.

Mancini, 64, fought professionally from 1979 to 1992 and held the World Boxing Association’s lightweight title from 1982 to 1984.

The former fighter hosted the inaugural Fight Night last year, the proceeds of which benefited veterans who too often are “the forgotten segment of society,” Mancini said. This year, funds will go toward the wellness center to assist first responders, many of whom he referred to as “the unappreciated segment of society.”

Fight Night will be Jan. 23 at Mr. Anthony’s Banquet Centre, 7440 South Ave., and will feature dinner and musical entertainment before the seven matches with several world boxing champions get underway. Doors open at 6 p.m.

Tickets are $150 per person for the entire evening and $25 apiece for the fights only, according to the Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini Foundation’s website. Tickets for the contender Fight Night table are $2,500 each, and about 100 of the $25 tickets are left, according to the foundation.

To order tickets, go to www.boomboommancini.com.

“I’ve been wanting to do this for years,” Mancini, who started the foundation in 2015, said. “Finally, I got tired of talking about it and I said, ‘Let’s just do it.'”

When he began his career in law enforcement more than 30 years ago, few resources were available to help first responders deal with the effects of job-related post-traumatic stress syndrome and other mental health problems. Instead, they typically kept such feelings bottled up, Poland Township police Chief Greg Wilson noted.

Facilities such as the Clarence R. Smith Jr. Wellness Center are invaluable in providing counseling and other vital services to first responders who suffer from trauma, said Wilson, who also praised Boardman police Chief Todd Werth for contributing to the facility.

The center offers proactive wellness programming to those who work for the 152 first responder agencies in Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties, along with their family members. The facility, however, is not set up to replace existing mental health services and treatment or other local wellness centers, its website states.

Also near the center will be the opening of a physical training center for first responders, Wilson noted.