Fini

Jordan Burroughs was born on July 8th, 1988 in Sicklerville, New Jersey.  By the time he was 30, which just happened last Sunday, he had amassed five freestyle world championships, one of which came with a gold medal with five rings on it, earned at the 2012 London Olympic games.  Thirty-years-of-age, however at the competitive level in which Burroughs rules, is not old.  Currently he is tied with Bruce Baumgartner, another American who lays claim to five world championships.  He is one shy of John Smith's record of six, a record which Burroughs has plenty of time to break.

Burroughs started wrestling at the age of five.  While attending Winslow Township High School he qualified for the New Jersey state wrestling championships as a junior and placed sixth.  In his senior year he was undefeated and won the New Jersey state championship.

After high school Burroughs won the 2006 Senior Nationals and was ranked as the 52nd  best high school wrestler in the nation.  At Nebraska Burroughs won two NCAA championships, one in 2009 (with a 35-0 record) and one in 2011 (with a 36-0 record).  In 2011 he also won the NCAA Hodge Trophy, the collegiate wrestling equivalent of football's Heisman Trophy.

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Shortly after his 2011 NCAA championship Burroughs qualified to represent the United States in the World Championships in Istanbul, Turkey, at which he won his first world title.  That was followed by his gold medal performance in London in 2012, the 2013 world championship in Budapest, Hungary, and the 2015 world championship in Paris, France.  In the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Burroughs' intensity was subdued by a head injury and for the first time in six years he did not finish a world championship event on the podium.  (In 2014 Burroughs placed third in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.)  Burroughs remedied that quickly by winning his fifth world championship in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 2017.  Burroughs has already qualified for the 2018 world championships, to be held in Budapest again. Burroughs has been a constant Team USA "thorn in the side" for Cornell's Kyle Dake, a four-time NCAA champion from Cornell, and David Taylor, a two-time NCAA champion for Penn State.  Dake and Taylor solved the problem when Taylor moved a weight class above Burroughs and Dake moved to one below the current world champ.

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On May 17th of this year Burroughs competed in the headlining match of the 2018 Beat the Streets, and annual outside wrestling event held this year at the newly constructed Pier 17 on the southern end of Manhattan Island, which is a wind-aided driver shot by John Daly from the Brooklyn Bridge.  His opponent was Frank Chamizo, a brash 25-year-old Cuban-born Italian who also won a world championship in Las Vegas.  At the beginning of the match Chamizo backed-up his braggadocios banter by taking a 4-0 lead after the first three-minute round. Burroughs was not fazed, however, as he realized he took the challenge a little more lightly than he should have.  He allowed Chamizo to score only one point in the final three minutes, while Burroughs put up six for a 6-5 win.

Burroughs married Lauren Mariacher in 2013.  They have a son Beacon (above) who will turn four-years-old later this month and a daughter, Ora, who recently turned two.

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