Jordan Barker-Porter: “If there is a title fight available, I am in. I know I have got the ability.”

Jordan Barker-Porter: “If there is a title fight available, I am in. I know I have got the ability.”

Another tough long day was winding down for Jordan Barker-Porter as we connected on Zoom. Jordan is one of many who has to combine a day job with her boxing career. Two jobs, one that pays the bills and one that doesn’t. Both jobs are physical, and incredibly hard on the body and the mind. A Personal Trainer outside of her endeavours in the ring, Jordan told me how hard her day job really is:

“It’s tough because I am not just standing there just watching, a lot of my clients come to me for the boxing, and I am holding the pads so it is physical. It’s not like I’m standing there telling people what to do I’m involved in the sessions.”

If trying to juggle two physically demanding jobs is hard enough, Jordan last year signed up for even more punishment. Literally. Jordan would be excused if any time off would be used with her feet very firmly up. But like all fighters, she is built differently from us mere mortals. Fighters tick in different ways than the rest of us. They demand challenges, and in many ways, they need them. A long-time viewer of the Channel 4 programme SAS: Who Dares Wins, Jordan after one false start decided to take the plunge and sign up for the show herself:

“I’ve watched it for years and I thought one day I would love to give that a shot. I went to apply for the previous season and I got to the end but I got timed out and it didn’t save anything I had done and it had taken me ages. I’m a great believer in timing and I thought if it’s not meant to be and things were kind of up in the air with where I was at the time. So I waited and because I was in such a good headspace I thought if ever the time was right it was now. I did my application, it took me three days but within 24 hours I got the phone call. I thought let’s go, I wanted to challenge myself. I can motivate myself, I don’t need a coach or someone standing over me telling me what to do. Doing something like that takes you to the next level mentally.”

The reasons for going on may differ from person to person, and what they take from the experience differs also. Jordan has struggled to open up to others in her life, trust is hard-earned for the lightweight hopeful and Jordan told me that helping with her trust issues is probably the biggest thing she takes out of doing the long-running show:

“I think just letting things go was one of the biggest things I got out of it. Just opening up a bit more, because I am quite guarded. It takes me a lot of time to let someone in and trust them. But in there you only had each other, I couldn’t make a phone call to my wife or someone in my family if I was feeling a certain kind of way, I had to rely on the people in there to get through it. Just letting my guard down a bit more. Also, when I think I’m done, there is so much more left in the tank, there really is.”

Some of that reluctance to open up and let people in is partly formed from her early struggles and not feeling that she belonged in her old world. But those early days very nearly spiralled out of control, Jordan was very much someone who was living on the brink:

“I’d never really dealt with things from the past and with me being a closed book that’s what I struggled with. I’d never really had a conversation with someone about how I felt, I’d just get drunk and have a couple of lines, it’s just the way it was back then.”

Her story could have ended very differently. From having no sense of belonging and a life seemingly without happiness or hope, Jordan now has all three. But before boxing came into her life, that life was very different. Drink, drugs and fighting on the cobbles were a typical and regular night out. To her credit, Jordan has turned her life completely around. Now five years sober, the past is behind her, but not forgotten:

“It was rough, it was tough and I just kept on making stupid mistakes and I’d take it out on the people around me basically. At the time I didn’t see another way out I thought that was the best way to deal with something, I’d crack open a bottle, and have something as a bit of a pick-me-up. But it wasn’t, I was just causing destruction basically.”

Boxing has saved many tortured souls, Jordan is another to benefit from what the sport can give:

“100% boxing saved me. I’d probably still be making the same mistakes and be in a ditch somewhere, or in a hospital or in jail. That’s the reality of where I could have ended up. I’ve just gone five years sober and people still ask me to this day how did I do it. I wasn’t an alcoholic in the sense I wasn’t dependent on it but I didn’t know when to stop and I would just go on a complete binge. Boxing is what helped me without getting any help. I have quite an addictive personality, I probably would have struggled without boxing and I probably would have caved in.”

Like many, Jordan fell in love with her new sport from the early seconds of her introduction into that new world. A natural in that fresh environment, suddenly she had found what she had been looking for:

“I think it was just the buzz, the atmosphere in the gym there was a connection there straight away. When I first went it was like someone had injected some heroin into my veins. I just remember that feeling and thinking this is something I can really do, and it was something I could stick to. The coach thought I had done it before, but it was the first time but I knew I could be something.”

There was no sporting background prior, her old world was so far removed from her new one:

“I was unfit, unhealthy and I was on the verge of being classed as obese. I was just so unhealthy, takeaways every night. I was around 70kg and I dropped around 11kg in a few months.” The results were quick for Jordan. And very quickly Jordan was thrown in at the deep end. She was pushed hard from the beginning. And it made her:

“In my second fight, I was in the Haringey Box Cup, I didn’t get the result I wanted but it doesn’t get any bigger than that. It was a big lesson for me, I knew what I had to work on and when I came back I made sure I won gold. I had 24 fights in 20 months.”

That early busy start to her boxing life was quickly replaced by the restrictions of Covid times. Unable to fight or even train properly, but like she has done many times in her life Jordan evolved and made her next move. An offer came to join the paid ranks, it was very much the perfect offer at the perfect time:

“I was due to weigh in for the National Elite Championships the day after we went into lockdown. I’d done the full weight cut, the full camp and then that happened. And then it kept getting extended and extended and I thought when are we going to get out of this, when am I going to get out again. And then I got the opportunity to turn pro, I got offered a contract and I thought if ever there is a time to turn pro it’s now. At the time you could be in the gym if you were a pro, so I thought I could start learning and analysing the game, so when things are back up and running I’m already a step ahead. I just thought it was the best time to do it.”

Boxing is a hard sport, an unforgiving one, and one that is even harder to make a living in. You are often fighting for scraps, pennies rather than pounds. If you are one of the lucky ones. Costs are high, and the rewards are anything but. Selling tickets determine many things, if you fight, what you earn. If anything. Many fight hoping for the lucky break, a contract with a major promoter that can change everything. Even then, the supposed golden ticket is anything but. Running around trying to sell tickets, and then dropping them off. It comes at a cost. Jordan says she found that out in her last fight:

“I think it was an issue in my last fight. I can sell tickets, that’s not the issue, it’s all the running around I was a one-man band. I thought I could do it all myself, but I was still running around in fight week dropping off tickets. It’s not the type of pressure you want on your shoulders. Out of the seven fights I’ve had, I have had one fight purse, and that was a couple of hundred pounds and that didn’t even cover my nutrition and my training. That’s the reality of boxing and what people don’t see. I’ve got a wife and a baby to pay for, I’ve got bills to pay to keep a roof over our heads. That’s the stressful side of it, I haven’t got the luxury of not being able to work. Some fighters have got amazing sponsorship deals and they don’t have to work, but I’ve still got to work. It’s tough, but it’s got me out of a dark place. I’ve just got to keep battling through and I know if I am given the opportunity I can achieve great things. I know I’ve got the ability to be a champion one day”

Jordan is now 5-2 as a professional, and despite an early setback in her career she was moving along quite nicely until her last fight in December. Jordan came up short, losing a six-round points decision over the Spanish fighter Sheila Martinez. It was a strange night, where despite an uncomfortable start you still expected Jordan to switch into another gear, which never came. She had the look of a different fighter against Martinez in her native North-East, a homecoming fight that ended in disaster for her and stopped that career momentum in its tracks. Jordan is reflective on her last fight and crucially understands what went wrong:

“There were a lot of things wrong that led to that performance. There wasn’t a performance there if I’m being honest. But people knew that wasn’t the real me in there, they knew it was just an off night. For some reason, I thought I could get back in the ring seven weeks after SAS. I went straight back into training camp, it was silly looking back on it now. I am my own worst enemy sometimes, it’s just about listening to the mind and body a bit better. The signs were there, the first few weeks back in camp I felt fucking shit and that is putting it politely. I was a full month in Vietnam I was on scrap food not on my normal nutrition, so when I came back I didn’t feel strong, I just didn’t feel sharp. I just have to take it on the chin and show people in April what I am really about.”

Jordan will make her return in the coming months, with lessons learned she is looking for a big year and looking to get back what was lost in December:

“I want to get the fight out of the way in April put in a big performance and then I am back where I was before the last fight. If there is a title fight available, I am in. I know I have got the ability. There is a domestic fight I would like for some form of title at lightweight.”

Jordan resisted my feeble attempts to get a name out of her. But the likes of Caroline Dubois and Rhiannon Dixon are above her domestically in the Boxrec lightweight rankings and Dixon especially would be a name of interest to her you suspect. They have sparred previously, and the unbeaten Matchroom prospect is tipped for big things this year with talk already of a Commonwealth or European title opportunity in the works, and you sense that Jordan would more than willing to be in the opposite corner.

But before any talk of titles, Jordan knows that her next fight in April is her immediate priority. Make no mistake, December was a bad night for her, there is no getting away from that. But she has turned her life around since those early desperate troublesome days, and Jordan is no stranger to adversity. And surviving it. A win in April and a good performance to go with it changes everything for Jordan. It’s some story, an inspirational one in many ways, and overcoming a setback in boxing is a minor obstacle to overcome in comparison to what has gone before.