Читать книгу Sporting Blood. Tales from the Dark Side of Boxing онлайн

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—Cincinnati trainer Mike Brown, 1993

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Lying in a crack house, seemingly on the verge of death, Pryor had an epiphany. He was rushed to a hospital with bleeding ulcers and underwent surgery. When he was released after two weeks—now sporting a long scar across his stomach, the last of several life marks—he headed straight for a church and to a new beginning, one that lasted for more than twenty years. Pryor became a deacon and a motivational speaker. He trained amateur fighters in Cincinnati. Aside from a few national television appearances alongside his son, Aaron Pryor Jr., a journeyman super-middleweight, “The Hawk” no longer had the spotlight on him. This new anonymity was a sign of serenity—something Pryor had earned with blood and sweat. The same way he had earned his Hall of Fame status in the ring.

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“I've had a phenomical . . . just a phenomical life.”

—Aaron Pryor

“Chaos” is the only suitable word to describe the career of Don Jordan. Nearly sixty years after he first won his welterweight title, Jordan remains a mystery without a solution. Not only did he bewilder spectators with his desultory performances, he also mystified trainers, sportswriters, police officers, mobsters, and historians, few of whom bothered to trace a career that read more like a case study than the narrative of a boxer. Welterweight champion only long enough to make two defenses and accidentally TKO nefarious Frankie Carbo, Jordan left behind a legacy as befuddling as that of Iron Eyes Cody or D. B. Cooper. Like many fighters in the 1950s, Jordan was dogged by ties to mobsters, but it was his own instability that ultimately led to his spectacular crash.