Don Jordan
Ring Record
Career Span	1953 –1962
Total Bouts	76
Wins	51
Knockouts	17
Draws	1
Losses	23
No Contests	1

Don Jordan (1934-1997) was a boxer born in Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

 and was the undisputed Welterweight

Welterweight

Welterweight is a weight class division in combat sports. Originally the term "welterweight" was used only in boxing, but other combat sports like kickboxing, taekwondo and mixed martial arts also began to use it for their own weight division system...

 Champion of the World from 1958 to 1960. His nickname was ‘Geronimo’. Managed by Don Nesseth.

Career

Born 22 June 1934 in Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

, Jordan’s brief spell as an amateur shows that he began boxing as a Middleweight

Middleweight

Middleweight is a division, or weight class, in boxing. Early boxing history is less than exact, but the middleweight designation seems to have begun in the 1840s. In the bare-knuckle era, the first middleweight championship fight was between Tom Chandler and Dooney Harris in 1897...

 and – unusually – worked his way down to Welterweight

Welterweight

Welterweight is a weight class division in combat sports. Originally the term "welterweight" was used only in boxing, but other combat sports like kickboxing, taekwondo and mixed martial arts also began to use it for their own weight division system...

 as a professional. His amateur career spanned just fifteen contests, of which he lost only one.

Jordan fought professionally for the first time in April, 1953. Standing 5 feet 9 inches and typically weighing around 147 lbs, Jordan was well-proportioned and quickly showed himself to be an effective performer, winning nine in a row before dropping a decision in March 1954, to a fighter he had out-pointed just two months previously. He beat Art Ramponi to pick up the California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

 State Welterweight

Welterweight

Welterweight is a weight class division in combat sports. Originally the term "welterweight" was used only in boxing, but other combat sports like kickboxing, taekwondo and mixed martial arts also began to use it for their own weight division system...

 title in October of that year and opened his 1955 campaign with a victory over former World Lightweight

Lightweight

Light-weight is a class of athletes in a particular sport, based on their weight.-Professional boxing:The lightweight division is over 130 pounds and up to 135 pounds weight class in the sport of boxing....

 Champion Lauro Salas

Lauro Salas

Lauro Salas was a former world lightweight boxing champion.-Professional career:...

. From that point on, Jordan would be mixing it with the best.

Jordan’s progress over the next three years – including two notable victories over Gaspar Ortega

Gaspar Ortega

Gaspar Ortega was a Mexican professional boxer and is considered one of the best Welterweight boxer's from Mexico.-Pro career:...

 – were rewarded when he challenged Virgil Akins

Virgil Akins

Virgil Akins was an American boxer who won the undisputed Welterweight Championship of the World in 1958. Nicknamed ‘Honeybear’, Akins was the first World Champion boxer from St. Louis.-Career:...

 for the World Welterweight

Welterweight

Welterweight is a weight class division in combat sports. Originally the term "welterweight" was used only in boxing, but other combat sports like kickboxing, taekwondo and mixed martial arts also began to use it for their own weight division system...

 Championship on 5 December 1958, winning by unanimous decision. Akins – who disputed the decision – would suffer an identical reverse when he met Jordan in a championship return five months later. That was the first of Jordan’s two successful title defences (the second was against Denny Moyer

Denny Moyer

Denny Moyer was an American boxer who held the world light middleweight title between 1962 and 1963. He finished his career with a 97–38–4 record.-Early life:...

 on 10 July 1959), before losing the title to Benny Paret

Benny Paret

Benny "the Kid" Paret, born Bernardo Paret , born in Santa Clara, Cuba, was a Cuban welterweight boxer. Paret won the world welterweight title twice in the early 1960s and died in 1962 following an unsuccessful attempt to defend the crown in what is considered to be the first ring death witnessed...

, eighteen months after being crowned.

Once he lost his title, Jordan also seemed to lose his way. The last years of his career saw him record more defeats than victories and he was effectively – if ignominiously – ‘retired’ by the man refereeing his October 1962 contest with Battling Torres. When Jordan refused to get up after a knockdown in the Seventh, referee Jimmy Wilson ruled that Torres had not actually hit Jordan hard enough to put him down and the fight was declared a ‘no contest’. Subsequently, the California State Athletic Commission

California State Athletic Commission

The California State Athletic Commission regulates professional boxing, professional and amateur kickboxing and professional mixed martial arts throughout the State by licensing all participants and supervising the events....

 suspended Jordan indefinitely. In 1961 Lucchese crime family mobster Frankie Carbo

Frankie Carbo

Paul John Carbo better known as "Frankie Carbo" was a New York City Mafia soldier in the Lucchese crime family, who operated as a boxing promoter and a gunman with Murder, Inc....

, known as "the Czar of Boxing" was charged with extortion and conspiracy regarding Jordan, convicted and given a 25-year federal sentence. Others convicted were Louis Tom Dragna

Louis Tom Dragna

Louis Tom Dragna is a former mobster and nephew of Jack Dragna and son of Tom Dragna. He was active in the Los Angeles crime family from the 1940s until the early 1980s.-Early life:...

 (conviction overturned), Truman Gibson

Truman Gibson

Truman Kella Gibson, Jr. was an American lawyer, government advisor, and later influential boxing promoter who played a unique and unheralded role in the Civil Rights Movement, primarily as a member of the "Black Cabinet" of Presidents Franklin D...

, Joe Sica, and Frank "Blinky" Palermo.

Death

After being robbed and seriously assaulted in a Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

 parking lot in September 1996, Don Jordan went into a coma

Coma

In medicine, a coma is a state of unconsciousness, lasting more than 6 hours in which a person cannot be awakened, fails to respond normally to painful stimuli, light or sound, lacks a normal sleep-wake cycle and does not initiate voluntary actions. A person in a state of coma is described as...

, and died in a nursing home in San Pedro

San Pedro, Los Angeles, California

San Pedro is a port district of the city of Los Angeles, California, United States. It was annexed in 1909 and is a major seaport of the area...

, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, on 13 February 1997.

Sources

1. Biographical information: (i) The Ring Record Book & Boxing Encyclopedia 1959 (Nat Fleischer

Nat Fleischer

Nathaniel Stanley Fleischer was a noted American boxing writer and collector. Fleischer inaugurated in 1922, encouraged by Tex Rickard, the Ring Magazine publication...

, The Ring Book Shop Inc., 1959). See p.8 for a very brief cameo. (ii) WBA Online http://www.wbaonline.com/default.asp, offers confirmation of the date and manner of Jordan’s death.

2. Ring Record: (i) The Cyber Boxing Zone http://www.cyberboxingzone.com/boxing/jordando.htm. This source misses Jordan’s first defence of the Welterweight

Welterweight

Welterweight is a weight class division in combat sports. Originally the term "welterweight" was used only in boxing, but other combat sports like kickboxing, taekwondo and mixed martial arts also began to use it for their own weight division system...

 Championship, taking place 24 April 1959. (ii) The Boxing Records Archive http://www.boxrec.com/boxer_display.php?boxer_id=009709. This source also provides information about the manner of the end of Jordan's career. (iii) The Ring Record Book & Boxing Encyclopedia 1959 (Nat Fleischer

Nat Fleischer

Nathaniel Stanley Fleischer was a noted American boxing writer and collector. Fleischer inaugurated in 1922, encouraged by Tex Rickard, the Ring Magazine publication...

, The Ring Book Shop Inc., 1959), P.276.

External links

• http://www.thecruelestsport.blogspot.com/2009/04/catastrophist-troubled-world-of-don.html