UFC featherweight Jared Gordon has already lives quite the crazy life and had a lot of ups and downs. Despite being one of the fastest rising UFC stars in the company, Gordon’s also had many battles outside of the cage.
Addiction is a very serious and scary place to be, but some definitely have more uphill battles than others. Jared was one of the many who had to fight even harder to get past it and it was a long road for the UFC featherweight. Gordon detailed his morbid addiction struggles with Ariel Helwani earlier.
“At that point, it was just black and white to me,” Gordon said. “I was either gonna keep getting high and die or go to prison or I was gonna live a normal life and get healthy and better.”
“It’s belittling, man, when people are giving you dirty looks,” Gordon said. “I’m like a Jewish kid from Long Island. You can’t look at me like that. I had some entitlement.”
“I didn’t come from the projects,” Gordon said. “I was born with a silver-spoon in my mouth. I’m grateful for that. I’m really lucky. I just chose to go down this road. So I guess it’s a little different, where people that are less fortunate kind of have no option, I guess you could say. I had plenty of options and plenty of sources. I could have got all the help that I wanted. I just chose to be — I wouldn’t say a bad person — but I just chose to do wrong things.”
Gordon is now two years sober and hopes to spread a positive message to those in need.
“I want to fight and make a living and yeah, fame is great and money, obviously you need money, I want to become champion, that’s a goal of mine, obviously. If you don’t want to become champion and you’re in the sport, you’re probably not gonna make it far.
“That’s what I want to do in the short term, but what I really want to do is do that so I can get the message out.
