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Jon Jones, please report to the Principal's Office. Ooooooh, "Bones" is in truh-bull ....
Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) President Dana White has issued his first public comments since his 24-year-old Light Heavyweight champion was arrested and charged with Driving While Intoxicated (DWI) by the Binghamton, N.Y., police department in the early morning hours of Sat., May 19, 2012, shortly after Jones crashed his 2012 Bentley Continental GT into a utility pole (see pics and video here).
And he's "super disappointed and bummed out," according to the Boston Herald.
That's perhaps an understatement, considering that Jones was his hottest and most promising commodity. In addition to being an absolute monster inside the Octagon, Jones is well-spoken, good-looking and charismatic. He was so charming, in fact, that the mixed martial arts (MMA) promotion made the landmark decision to sponsor him for his fight against Rashad Evans at UFC 145 just last month.
White didn't mention remorse for that decision. On the contrary, he seems motivated to get inside the head of Jones and determine what his future holds before he throws it all away with bad decisions.
Check out White's intentions for his upcoming meeting with Jones after the jump:
"It’s really sitting down and figuring out what is it you want to do. You’re 24 years old, you could be a force in this sport for the next 10 years and go down as the greatest ever – beat everybody, do all this stuff, be the first guy to break through and get a Nike deal, the first guy to get Gatorade and all these other things. Do you want to be that guy or do you want to go the other way? You can go the other way, too, and you can be the total bad guy, make a few million here or there and then go tell everybody to go, ‘(Expletive) off.’ It’s no different whether it’s the UFC, boxing, the NBA, the NFL – it’s the guys who really focus and get their (stuff) together no matter how old you are, whether you’re 21 or 31. That’s what we’ve got to figure out where Jones is at and what he wants to do.... The road is littered with talented guys who didn’t live up to their potential."
Unsurprisingly, Jones has remained relatively silent since the arrest. His management team issued a vanilla statement shortly after the incident, affirming its support for Jones and asking for privacy until the dust settled.
He did issue his own personal statement on Facebook, offering an apology to his inner circle of supporters, as well as detailing how "sickened" he was by all the people trying to "kick him while he's down." Jones has since deleted the apology, during which he admitted he "screwed up big time."
Malki Kawa, his manager, indicated earlier today that "Bones" won't run and hide from his "mistake" and will "stand up like a man," but must also adhere to the advice from his legal counsel to avoid making a bad situation even worse.
And, of course, now Dana White and the UFC.
Feel free to catch up on all the latest Jones DWI-related news and notes right here.
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