I can remember back in 2013 I was invited to speak at the MIT Sloan Analytics conference in Boston, as part of a panel comprised of MMA minds. It was to be me, Luke Thomas, Rami Genauer (of Fight Metric), Dominick Cruz, and Jordan Breen, a collection of names that felt entirely eclectic for the purpose of analytics…yet somehow perfect for a sport formed by so many disenfranchised players.

If I’m being honest, I was a little intimidated by the invitation. Not because of stage fright or hot mics or because of the subject matter, but because of Jordan. I’d been on his show a few times for Sherdog Radio, and each time felt like an odyssey. A trip into the vast reserves of his mind. Whatever limited ideas I had of a fighter, he seemed to have a fully illustrated biography right there ready to access in an instant. I can remember him going on about Hatsu Hioki for a good 15 minutes after I’d mistakenly called him the “Iron Horse” rather than the “Iron Broom.” To speak on Japanese MMA was to meet him directly in his wheelhouse.

He was a living archive of the sport, and he took it all with him.

I heard the news of his passing on Monday, just like everyone else, and it made me think back on that time, and the few times I had the chance to hang out with him over the years. What a truly lucid, brilliant mind he was in our sport. So smart that he could make you feel unversed on subjects you (thought you) knew very well. Yet a sweetheart, too. He had a sense of humor about everything, including the sport he covered, which he never forgot was rooted in the absurd. It was within that high-brow levity that he did his best work.

For me, he was one of MMA’s founding voices — part of that Sherdog crew that ruled the day, alongside all the other J’s (Josh Gross, Jack Encarnacao, Jeff Sherwood, TJ De Santis, Jake Rossen, and Greg Savage). There’s that old Nietzsche quote I always think of when covering MMA, “Who among you can laugh and be elevated at the same time?”

I think the answer was Jordan Breen.

Back when I started really covering the sport in 2008, Jordan had long been on the scene. He was a guy who made MMA infectious back when some people were still holding their fingers up in crucifix shapes whenever the sport was brought up. Dana White likes to talk about the Forrest Griffin-Stephan Bonnar fight as the UFC’s Trojan Horse that busted into the American living room. That might be true, but the foot soldiers of those days did their share. Unsung in such pioneering discussions are guys like Jordan, who breathed passion into the sport for so many years. 

Look around at the tributes on social media these last couple of days, and “passion” is one of the first words you’ll see.

I would add fearless, too.

No subject was too small for him. No avenue of thought too obscure. No subject matter too taboo. From what I saw, he never worried about getting in trouble with his takes. He just spoke his mind, with his love of the sport fueling his enthusiasm to get it all out. He could digress like it was an artform, too. One time on his show we fell into a discussion about fighters faking the act of chewing gum when they showed up on the scale. He had examples at the ready. This was the good stuff, the kind of lunacy that made you love Jordan Breen.

He saw everything, it seemed. 

I had the chance to hang with him at a couple of events, which allowed me to know him a little better. We had beers a couple of times up at the Canadian shows. One time, when I was sitting next to him on press row, I sang out some Jethro Tull, “Sitting on a park bench…” and he jumped in as if on cue, “Eyeing little girls, with bad intent,” before mouthing the riffage. Then he proceeded to talk about the song “Aqua Lung” for a good five minutes, as if he’d just been waiting for the subject to come up.

Truly one of a kind.

I didn’t get a chance to do that analytics panel with Jordan, because my mom was sick, and I had to go back to Colorado. I heard about the substance abuse problems and the mental health struggles. I know that Jordan left Toronto for his native Halifax when his own mom passed away several years back. He went back to take care of his father.

He didn’t have siblings. From what I understand, he was alone when they found him in the shelter where he was staying. His longtime friend Mike Bohn, who’d tried to stay in touch with him for the last few years as Jordan was slipping away, reported the news of his passing.

Gone too soon. Rest easy, Jordan. Your broader family that you helped bring together in the fight game will miss you.