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

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Over the next two years, Jordan would hit the skids running and would win only two of his last eleven fights. The boxer with graceful footwork, snappy combinations, and a precision jab seemed to vanish overnight. Other than Carmen Basilio, Tony DeMarco, and Ludwig Lightburn, Jordan suffered his humiliating free fall at the hands of one middling pug after another. On October 5, 1962, Jordan hit bedrock after being “stopped” in the first round by “Battling” Torres at the Olympic Auditorium, where Jordan had won the welterweight title less than four years earlier. The California State Athletic Commission immediately suspected a fix and suspended him for life. Jordan, only twenty-eight at the time of the Torres fiasco, never fought again. His final record stands at 51-23-1-1.

Today Don Jordan is all but forgotten. If he is remembered at all it is for the sudden tailspin that sent him crashing from welterweight champion to complete washout in less than two years. Why did such a talented boxer unravel so suddenly? Was it the drinking, the carousing, the smoking? Certainly other fighters—from Abe Attell to Harry Greb—burned candles at both ends without sputtering out so quickly. Did the strange virus he claimed was responsible for his loss to Luis Federico Thompson linger on and affect his performances? Or was it merely hard luck? The kind of luck a rough-and-tumble man like Jordan might believe was the only kind he could expect?