Jon Jones the former UFC light heavyweight champion might go down in the history of MMA as one of the greatest could-have-been fighters ever. Unfortunately, Jon has stepped from one controversy to another controversy across his Steroid combat career, courting trouble almost every time he has made his way toward the octagon.
Jones was arrested for a DUI back in 2012, after a car crash. In 2015 he tested positive for a metabolite found in cocaine and spent a night in rehabilitation. He was later involved in a hit and run car accident with a pregnant woman. Last year, Jones tested positive for clomiphene and letrozole. Three different independent arbitrators ruled that Jon had not purposely used anything to enhance his performance. However, he got the one-year suspension for his reckless behavior.
Jones eventually return to the UFC and defeated Daniel Cormier via 3rd-round technical knockout, but the result was overturned, and Jones was stripped of his title as he tested positive for the banned substance Turinabol, an anabolic steroid in a drug test run by USADA.
The suspension for this violation could be as long as four years, but UFC vice president Jeff Novitzky says that Jones may only have to prove that once again, he had taken a tainted supplement.
Jones and the UFC will have to retrace Jones’s activity from July 6. The former champion’s team will have to test every supplement he used to prove the banned substance came from a non-high-risk source to get off scot-free and the USADA may give Jones a “no fault sanction,” which does not carry a suspension.
“Jon tested positive from a sample collection done weigh in day before the UFC event in Anaheim that was in July. Basically he was just coming off a one-year suspension. The previous suspension went to arbitration. So you had three different independent arbitrators looking at it. All of them ruled that he did not purposely use anything to enhance his performance. But, they also ruled that he operated with careless and reckless disregard for what he took and ended up getting contaminated.
So there was really no reduction in sanction and so he got a one year sanction from that previous one. Now unfortunately on this one, because of that previous sanction, he’s now looking at a second sanction which would basically double your penalty. The substance that he tested positive for was a metabolite of an anabolic steroid.” said Novitzky.
Jeff Novitzky continues, Jon Jones might get out without any suspension:
“That was a substance where a few years ago would only be detectable for a few days within the system. Now laboratories have found longtime metabolites tests, where metabolites can be detected four maybe up to six months after use. However, Jon [Jones] submitted clean tests on July 6 and July 7 of 2017. His positive test was from July 29. A simple Google search would show you that this substance, it’s detection window has now moved out from four to six months. So, it doesn’t make a lot of sense that anybody with any level of sophistication would choose to use this drug. I had to have been used after July 7, or entered his system after July 7.
It would not make sense to go to this drug because of the multi-month detection window. So, that would leave me to believe that it was probably from non-purposeful ingestion.”
Jeff said, Jon Jones continues to prove his innocence, and we want to assist him in that matter:
“So where we are at is that Jon’s team is working hard. We (the UFC) are assisting them wherever we can to try to determine how this substance got into his system. Sometimes that is not a quick process. It can take weeks, if not months of testing supplements and retracing your steps.
“Best case scenario is if he (Jones) can prove that this (substance) thing came from something that was not high risk.”
USADA’ CEO on Jon Jones:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kMxN8GN208
Dude the truth is I would never do steroids, I put that on my children and I put that on my Heavenly Father https://t.co/i8EEbrQU5x
— BONY (@JonnyBones) September 14, 2017
So what you think about this latest update, do you think Jon Jones knowingly used a performance enhancer? Let us know in the comments below!
