Jared Gordon | Living A Better Life

Saturday’s contest with Moises, which serves as the final preliminary card pairing on the 12-fight slate at the UFC APEX, represents not only a tremendous opportunity for the 36-year-old from Queens, but also a recognition of where the company sees him in terms of the lightweight hierarchy.

“I have a great opponent in front of me — a good name, has fought some big fights, solid fighter; it’s a perfect starting point,” he said of the pairing with Moises, who has been ranked in the past and, like Gordon, is generally regarded as better than his recent results may otherwise suggest. “I think (the UFC) know that I’m on the cusp, or I should be on the cusp, but that doesn’t matter to me anymore, because everybody knows, or they should know.

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“I don’t have to prove anything anymore. I just have to go out and do what I want to do for me and my family. I don’t really care what anyone thinks at this point, so I just have to go out and put a stamp on it.”

After a couple years where close fights didn’t fall his way on the scorecards left people almost exclusively wanting to talk about those debated decisions and the kind of “remember when” moments Gordon’s favorite television character Tony Soprano loathes, the Kill Cliff FC man has put those things behind him, left them in the past, and is focused on getting to where he knows he should be in the talent-rich 155-pound weight class.

“I’ll put it to you this way: I’m very proud of what I’ve done and who I am, fighting-wise, but I’m not happy with my fighting career because I “should be” in a higher position,” he said. “So I have more to prove to myself, but not to anyone else, and I’m gonna go do that on May 17th.”

While part of what is driving Gordon is the knowledge that he’s gone toe-to-toe with a bunch of talented competitors and could have — and arguably should have — come out ahead in those contests, but the bigger driver of his eagerness are the genuine changes that he’s made to his life.

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When we spoke in February ahead of the fight with Ruzibaev that never materialized, Gordon told me “I’m eager to see what life is like when I’m not doing certain things any more that I know were bad for me spiritually, mentally, and emotionally.”

Ahead of this weekend’s contest, I ask if he wished to expand on those thoughts, and the ever-candid competitor offered up a serious dose of self-reflection and honestly the likes of which you rarely get from an athlete in his position.

“For a long time, I did everything where it was ‘as long as I’m not doing this’ — I’m not getting high, I’m not drinking, I’m not being a piece of s***, stealing, being a criminal,” began Gordon, a recovering addict whose sobriety has been at the forefront of his UFC journey and who has never been shy about telling his story. “But even though I was sober, I was still, at certain points of my sobriety, living like an alcoholic or an addict would: being promiscuous, gambling, spending money where I shouldn’t; not aligning myself with what God would want for me.

“As a married man and as a person who says that they are a follower of Christ — (I needed to be) living more in His vision for me and being true to that, not just what you see on the surface, and then behind closed doors I’m being a crazy lunatic.

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“There was always that question in the back of my head of ‘Maybe I’m not getting what I think I deserve because I’m still being a lunatic in certain ways.’ Now that I know that I’m not, I’m really curious to see what happens.”

Gordon acknowledged that past indiscretions and poor choices often lingered in the back of his mind, surfacing at inopportune moments that prompted him to question whether things in the Octagon went the way they did because of that guilt he was carrying.