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

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In 1973, over a decade removed from his short-lived and tumultuous heyday, Jordan earned more notoriety after a bizarre interview with Peter Heller. Akin to some of the jailhouse ramblings of Charles Manson, the former welterweight champion of the world claimed, among other things, to have been a paid assassin as a child in the Dominican Republic and to have been a factotum for the underworld throughout his career. One outlandish claim followed another until, finally, the question of veracity became moot. His answers were “true” insofar as they functioned as dark correlatives to his fractured psyche. “Winning the championship was the most awful experience of my life,” Jordan told Heller. “Believe me, it was awful. It was not a thrill to me. I was involved in certain situations, activities not to my advantage, shall we say. I was involved in certain things; to win was not as thrilling as I thought it would be as a fighter. When I lost it I was happy. I was more happy losing it than winning it.”