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Remembering Jordan Breen: A mind MMA couldn't replace, and a man it couldn't save

About a week before he got the news about his old friend, T.J. De Santis got a text asking him a question he'd asked himself many times over the past few years: How was Jordan Breen doing these days? 'All I could say was, 'I don't know and it breaks my heart,'' De Santis said. Advertisement Mike Bohn hadn't heard from Breen in close to a year. He'd tried many different ways to contact him. He'd even asked police in Breen's hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia, to check in on him. 'I just wanted to get some answers,' Bohn said. 'I'm checking the obituaries and things like that. Kind of dark thoughts, but just the reality of what was needed.' The police found him and made contact, they reported, but couldn't offer more than that. Breen did not want to be found, they said. Bohn heard from him once more after that, an email several months later 'kind of poking fun at me for calling the cops on him and asking if I could help him out financially.' The email came from an unfamiliar address and got filtered into the spam folder, so it was a few weeks before Bohn found it. He responded right away, but didn't hear back. Then last week he got the update he'd dreaded but also sort of expected. Breen had been found dead on his birthday. He'd just turned 38. Advertisement His name may not be familiar to newer fight fans, but you couldn't be anywhere near MMA in the early 2000s and not know of Jordan Breen. A writer and radio host for one of the first and most influential online MMA media outlets, Breen was known for his energy and enthusiasm as well as his encyclopedic knowledge of the sport. I was a guest on his show several times over the years, and it always felt uniquely intimidating trying to keep up with him on-air. As Uncrowned's Chuck Mindenhall wrote of Breen after his death: 'He was a living archive of the sport, and he took it all with him.' Breen found his way to Sherdog as a 19-year-old wiz kid who impressed the editors with the depth of his knowledge. Former editor Greg Savage had never heard of him until fellow editor Josh Gross insisted they hire him, he said. Gross had found some of Breen's writing online and was adamant that the site could use his talent and enthusiasm. Advertisement 'Josh had read his stuff about the most niche topics in Japanese MMA,' Savage said. 'He was writing on, I don't know if you call it a blog at that point, but he had a little string of articles about Japanese MMA, talking about Shooto B-leagues and stuff like that. Stuff that no one over here gave a damn about. I mean, there were people that cared obviously, so he generated a following on his own, but it was the most obscure stuff that maybe they didn't even care about in Japan. But Jordan would dig in and that was just his nature. And not just in MMA. He was like that with everything.' Breen couldn't stand when others knew more about a topic — any topic — than he did, Savage said. He recalled once mentioning to Breen in an offhand, passing remark something about a television show about World War II fighter pilots that he used to watch as a kid. 'He went and watched all 50-something episodes of it before the next time I talked to him,' Savage said. 'He knew all this stuff about it and had so much to say about it and I was just like, 'Dude I don't even remember 90% of this.' He had to do that on every subject. It was hilarious.' De Santis worked with Breen on Sherdog Radio and often described him as his 'podcasting soulmate.' Their pre- and post-show conversations could be extensive but also exhausting, De Santis said, because Breen seemed unable to shut his brain off or contain his excitement about any topic. Advertisement 'I remember calling fights with him at Tachi Palace (Casino) and it was the night before and we were going over our notes,' De Santis said. 'It's late, like one o'clock in the morning, and he gets off on a tangent talking about [former UFC flyweight Ian McCall] and then the next thing I know he's telling me about Mike Ehrmantraut from 'Breaking Bad' and why he's the best-written character on TV and I'm like, 'Jordan, I can't get into this right now, I need to go to sleep.'' That approach fueled his Sherdog Radio shows, where Breen could go for hours with an almost frantic fervor and somehow never run out of things to talk about. In those early days of MMA's rapid growth phase, his passion helped fuel a fan base that couldn't get coverage of the sport from any mainstream sports outlets, which universally regarded MMA and the UFC as the extreme and slightly embarrassing fringe of the pro sports world. It was the most obscure stuff that maybe they didn't even care about in Japan. But Jordan would dig in and that was just his nature. And not just in MMA — he was like that with everything. T.J. De Santis Well before he became a colleague and then a friend of Breen's, MMA Junkie's Mike Bohn listened to his endless rants while working on a road crew in British Columbia. 'Even before I got into MMA journalism, one of my last jobs, I was doing flagging and construction for this bridge project in Vancouver,' Bohn said. 'And I had to basically sit in a truck for eight hours and get out once every hour to hold the stop sign for the no traffic that was coming at three in the morning, so a concrete truck could cross or something. I had so much time sitting in those, so I just listened to those shows to consume all the time. I thought he was so insightful. The same thing we all thought when we listened to him.' Advertisement Due to the almost entirely online nature of MMA media work at the time, many of those who worked with or around Breen rarely saw him in person. When he showed up to work events, his appearance was sometimes a shock to people. Sometimes his dark hair would be gelled into severe spikes, like an '80s rocker. Or he might show up in bold outfits that forced people to take notice of him. 'I remember going to a press conference with him where he was wearing canary yellow capris with a sports blazer,' De Santis said. 'And I was like, I don't know much about fashion, but I don't think that's right. But he made it work.' Savage met him for the first time when picking him up from the airport ahead of an event in Newark, New Jersey. Breen had worked for him for years by this point, but it was the first time they'd ever come face to face. 'I already kind of had an idea that he was a little out there, a little different, and when I picked him up at the airport I was immediately like, 'Holy s***, this guy is a maniac.' I knew it right away. I spent five days working with him, I want to say it was the [Georges] St-Pierre and [Dan] Hardy fight. I introduced him to a bunch of people and he was so charismatic. He would draw everyone to him, and a lot of people were taken aback by him but they also loved him. He dressed like a psycho. He'd go from the death metal look to then looking like he should have been on a beach in the Hamptons. It was nuts.' Advertisement In subsequent years, when the two of them shared living quarters during work trips, Savage got a glimpse of Breen's approach to partying in his off hours. 'Just seeing this guy from morning to night, he probably slept three hours a day, if that,' Savage said. 'He was constantly scrolling through the internet and working. There was never a dull moment. He was always doing something and then the second you were done with work, it was like straight out, let's go, we're going to go hit it hard. That was his nature. There was never an off switch.' Breen could go for hours with an almost frantic fervor and somehow never run out of things to talk about. In those early days of MMA's rapid growth phase, his passion helped fuel a fan base that couldn't get coverage of the sport from any mainstream sports outlets. By this point, Sherdog had been purchased by Crave Online, which operated a conglomeration of sports and lifestyle sites. During one of the many periods of sudden contraction in the online media industry, Savage was let go in August 2016 and later took a job with the PFL (formerly World Series of Fighting). Breen was kept on at Sherdog, but only for a short time. After he too was laid off, according to Savage, Breen's struggles with drugs and alcohol seemed to intensify. Advertisement 'He called me in about 2018, looking for a job, but there was nothing we really had for Jordan,' Savage said. 'I knew he was well into his addiction by that point, and it's hard to really fight to bring someone in when they're like that. It's something I think back on and regret now, like maybe there was a way I could have done more for him, but it was tough at that point.' In the week or so since Breen's death, this is one consistent sentiment among the fellow media members I've spoken to. We all knew Breen was struggling. We knew that the lack of steady employment had contributed to an unraveling in his personal life, and that the unraveling made him more unpredictable and less reliable as a prospective employee. Still, we all wonder if we couldn't have done something. 'I've felt a lot of regret,' De Santis said. 'Could I have helped him? Could I have done more? That's what's hard, because Jordan was my friend more than anything. He was my friend. And I feel like a little bit of a failure there, but at the same time, the kid was a country away. … He was his own biggest enemy. We did a lot of stuff toward the end where, half the time it would be Jordan Breen and the other half he either just wouldn't show up or he would show up in a compromised state. I guess that's the struggle with addiction, you know what I mean? Just can't get out of your own way sometimes.' Bohn probably did more to help him than any other media friend, from loaning him money to letting Breen sleep on his couch. But even that friendship became strained by some of Breen's personal struggles. He'd invite Bohn to hang out at a bar where Breen's girlfriend at the time worked, but between their frequent arguments and Breen's reliance on the alcohol she kept serving him, the relationship seemed increasingly toxic and actively harmful. Advertisement 'There'd be times where I could see he was hurting and I'd invite him to hang out and he'd show up at my house and I could tell he hadn't slept in days and was coming off the back of whatever he was doing,' Bohn said. 'He would come and we'd play some WWE 2K or UFC, and then he would pass out on the coach for 15 hours and I could tell that was one place he maybe had some peace and could actually get some rest. But what do you do beyond that? Do you invite the guy to live with you? Do you do this? There's a lot of things you could try to do, but it just seemed like he was kind of his own worst enemy in that regard.' Savage still wonders to what extent Breen's many gifts were also part of his undoing. The frenetic intensity of the way he thought and spoke and wrote seemed like an expression of the same things that made him especially susceptible to addition. 'He was absolutely brilliant,' Savage said. 'Do you get that without the recklessness that comes along with it? I don't know.' De Santis expressed his sorrow that so many of MMA's current fans never had a chance to get to know Breen, or even learn the extent to which he helped shape coverage of the sport. Advertisement Sherdog's 'Fight Finder' tool was an instrumental building block of MMA record-keeping, and Breen was a vital force behind its exhaustive maintenance and structure, De Santis said. The requirements of such an extensive database of fights and fighters were well-suited to Breen's obsessive mind. Those who can rely on accurate and easily accessible fighter records now probably have no idea the debt they owe to people like Breen, he said. 'He was meticulous about things that people would never even know,' De Santis said. 'It's so weird because today I don't even know what a hardcore fan is. A hardcore might say, 'I've been watching since 2011. I've been watching since 2020. I've been watching since 1997.' Jordan, that's the thing, I can't even pinpoint when his fandom started. I really can't. He just seemed to show up knowing everything about everything.' As longtime MMA journalist Luke Thomas put it on his Substack: 'To the best of my knowledge, the degree to which Breen was respected, admired and viewed as instrumental in the development of MMA fandom for an entire generation of fans is not something Breen himself was aware.' Those who knew him and learned from him, however, have no doubt. They lost not only a friend, but also a walking piece of this sport's memory. 'He wanted to help media members like myself before I had any traction,' Bohn said. 'I'm sure a lot of people, you see them kind of responding, saying the same thing. The way he cared not only about the sport itself, but helping boost all the people who wanted to be involved in it to make it all grow upwards — I think that's something that we should all kind of take in, and say it's a collective effort in that regard. Tearing each other down isn't as helpful toward that goal as building each other up. And I think he really did his best to do that.'