On 30 June last year Jordan Gill drank a litre of vodka in a field in Cambridgeshire as he contemplated ending his life. It was the night before he turned 29 and earlier that Friday morning it had been, in his own words, “just a normal, sunny day. I woke up and didn’t know what to do with myself”.
We sit a foot apart on a very different Friday morning in a boxing gym in Harlow. Apart from a few weights and pieces of apparatus, the room is empty. Gill and Zelfa Barrett step into the ring for a compelling super-featherweight contest in Manchester on Saturday night. But, now, he pauses before going back into the darkness and despair.
He is an intelligent man, who was offered a place to study at some of the UK’s most prestigious universities, and it feels briefly invasive to revisit such distressing memories. Gill, who has a Sikh heritage, would love to become the first fighter of Indian ancestry to win a world title as a professional boxer. I’ve thought that he is a special fighter ever since I saw him win the European featherweight title after an unforgettable battle against Karim Guerfi in February 2022. Knocked down heavily in the seventh round, with his face swollen and barely able to move his legs, Gill produced a stunning knockout in the ninth.
I ask if he minds talking about that terrible night last summer. “No, it’s all right,” Gill says. “I live in Chatteris but I was spending time with a girl in Ramsey, which is nearby. Everything just hit me. I’d lost my European title [in a shock defeat to the veteran Kiko Martínez in October 2022], split up with my wife and things weren’t good. I’m getting an earful from the girl I’m seeing, I’m not training, not eating well, not feeling good. I’ve got no trainer, no promoter, no manager, no prospects of a fight. I hadn’t got anything to show for my career apart from a few shiny belts. And I’m 29 tomorrow. So it hit me like a ton of bricks.”
Gill looks up as the blurring memories tumble through him. “I had an argument with this girl and with my wife and I took myself away. I’d got a litre of vodka and I almost drank the whole bottle neat, slumped at the side of a tree. I’d never touched alcohol until a month before. I started drinking to have a good time but, deep down, it was to numb the stress and the pain.”
The vodka just made Gill “more sad. My phone kept ringing but I wouldn’t answer”. Gill nods when I ask if it was then that he considered taking his life. “Yeah. 100%” He was fortunate that his former girlfriend had his location on her phone. “She came and found me,” Gill says. “I remember seeing her but feeling numb. It was a mile’s walk to the car park and she had to almost carry me the whole way. I couldn’t walk.”
He knocked out Michael Conlan in a riveting display of skill and power just over five months later and, after that victory in his opponent’s home city of Belfast, Gill spoke with raw emotion. “I’ve had a hard year,” he told the stunned crowd of 11,000 at the SSE Arena. “Not many people know what I’ve been through. After the Kiko loss, I lost touch with myself. I broke up with my wife. On June 30 I was in a field. I drank a litre of vodka and I was going to kill myself, and somebody saved me.”
The quiet of the room in Harlow is broken only by the sounds of sparring next door as his new trainer, Ben Davison, works with other fighters. Was that tumultuous night in the Fenland field a decisive turning point? “It took a little longer but that was the darkest day and things got better from there. I thought: ‘I can’t go on like this.’ But I had one more incident in another field three weeks after that.” Had he felt more hopeful on the day he turned 29? “No, not really. I didn’t want it to happen.”
Describing his subsequent night in a new field, again with a bottle of vodka, Gill says quietly: “It was just as bad. I’d been due to go to one of my best friends’ wedding the next day and my mum didn’t let me. So I was really frustrated. But, this time, my mum and my brother-in-law came and got me. She took me to hospital to try and get me counselling, but I chose not to do that.”
His close friend Leigh Wood [the WBA world featherweight champion], rescued him from depression. “I called Leigh and told him most of the situation. He said: ‘Let me speak to Ben [Davison] to see if you can come to Harlow with us.’ A week went by and then Leigh rang and said: ‘We’re going on a training camp. Why don’t you fly out and help me with my training and see how you get on with them.’ I went to Fuerteventura in August and by the end of September the bad times had gone and I had my act half together. In October I fully focused when the Conlan fight was announced.”
The discipline and structure of boxing can transform lost lives. “Definitely,” Gill agrees. “It took me out of a downward spiral. Leigh won’t understand what he did for me but I’ll always be grateful to him and the guys coaching me now – Ben, Barry Smith, Lee Wiley – and my dad and family.”
Domestic contests between well-matched fighters often produce the best of boxing and Gill is admirably enthusiastic about the difficult challenge Barrett will present him in their headline bout at the Manchester Arena. Their records are remarkably similar with Gill having lost only twice in 31 fights while Barrett’s 30-2 resume underlines his own experience. Both are former European champions but Barrett has already fought for the IBF world title as an established super-featherweight. This will be only Gill’s second fight in the bigger division and he also concedes home advantage to the Mancunian – just as he did to Conlan in Belfast.
“It’s only going to be me, him and the ref in there,” Gill says wryly, “so the fans can’t fight for him. But he’s very good and this will be my toughest fight so far. I‘m very excited and I’ve prepared really well because he’s world class. He’s a good mover, can punch hard and dig deep. He’s tough and a big dude. When we came face-to-face, I thought: ‘Wow, you’re massive. But it’s not easy for me to make nine stone four [the super-featherweight limit] so it’s even harder for you.’”
Gill was so weight-drained for his shattering defeat to Martínez, when he was dropped four times, that he says “a strong wind would have blown me over. That’s when the spiral down really started as the promoters don’t want to know and the phone goes cold. My marriage had also been under strain as I was training in Sheffield and away from home a lot. No money was coming in and no fights were presenting themselves.” He and his wife are friendlier now. “It was mainly my fault,” Gill says. “It always is. But it was bad after the Kiko fight as I couldn’t get motivated.”
Gill has been boxing since he was four and his ambition is usually strong. It was at its most powerful during the brutal struggle against Guerfi. How did he withstand such punishment when he looked concussed, had a badly injured knee and both eardrums had perforated? “Everything slowed down, because I was not really moving, and it felt like I had all the time in the world. It was almost peaceful because I couldn’t hear anything and I was in the moment. I was well behind and he was smelling blood but I found peace in the chaos. I was thinking clearly: ‘He’s dropping his [right] hand when throwing a jab and he’s getting sloppy because I’m looking more vulnerable. Sooner or later I’ll land the right hand.’ I rocked him in the eighth, and got him in the ninth.”
The O2 Arena erupted and the ringside commentators screamed in disbelief. Gill smiles now. “It’s immense, and the biggest wave of relief and elation you’ll ever feel. The European title was a massive milestone and I achieved it in dramatic fashion.” Gill was taken to hospital. “They wanted me scanned to see if I had a fractured cheekbone because I had a swelling on my eye. But I was all clear.”
Gill did well at school, with nine As at GCSE before his three A-levels led to offers to study law at “some of the best universities in the country”. So he worries about the brain damage that can occur in the boxing ring. “I think about it a lot, because you can’t do it forever and the wear-and-tear is heavy. It’s the toughest sport in the world and I want to retire from boxing before boxing retires me. I want to have three, maximum four, more fights.”
He is close to his father, Paul, an amateur boxing coach. Gill admits his dad wanted him to get out of boxing last year but they still hope he might fight for a world title if he defeats Barrett. “Every fighter dreams of becoming world champion but it usually feels unachievable. I’m very close now. It will be special to do it because of how long and hard a road it’s been and how much I’ve sacrificed and lost, how much my family has supported me.
“I lived with my grandad when I grew up and he was a Sikh. He was an inspiration and it didn’t matter that some people said: ‘Oh, you can’t do boxing because we’re Sikh.’ Generations change. I know other Sikh boxers that are actually religious and they still fight. I think everyone accepts that if boxing makes me happy then it has to be good.”
Gill has conquered his depression because, he says, “I don’t have time to slip down as I’m either here or at my gym in Wisbech. I’ve got so many exciting things happening that I don’t overthink. You have to eat healthy food and train hard, otherwise you’re not going to be in any condition to fight. Both those things help you feel better about yourself.”
He owns a gym that focuses on fitness and mental health for 300 people in Wisbech and he plans to open another in Peterborough soon. Gill is also about to launch a nutrition company and has come a long way from his desolation last summer. “I’ve had thousands of messages from people saying: ‘Thanks for what you said because it helped me.’ I’m glad it has brought more awareness to that side of life.”
Gill looks almost shy when I ask if he feels proud of all he has done in speaking so openly. “I don’t think it’s for me to feel proud. Other people can be proud of me but I won’t be proud until the job is done and I’m world champion.”
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counsellor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
