Former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) light heavyweight champion, Jon Jones, has the opportunity to reclaim his crown this December when he rematches Alexander Gustafsson in the UFC 232 pay-per-view (PPV) main event.
Assuming this former rival doesn’t sabotage it.
A second victory over “The Mauler” will go a long way in reestablishing “Bones” as the greatest pound-for-pound fighter in all of mixed martial arts (MMA), a designation that was stripped right alongside his 205-pound strap after a couple of failed drug tests.
Perhaps that was simply an excuse to downplay his accomplishments.
“I would say that those would be people looking for an excuse not to give it to me, not to give credit where it’s due,” Jones told JW Raw (via MMA Fighting). “Because in the first situation, it was proven — well, in both situations, whatever was in me chemically was proven scientifically that the amounts were so small that there was no way possible to affect my performance in a positive or a negative way.”
Jones tested positive for Clomiphene, an anti-estrogen agent, as well as Letrozole, an aromatase inhibitor, ahead of his scratched UFC 200 showdown with Daniel Cormier in summer 2016, then pissed hot for Turinabol in the wake of his UFC 214 win over “DC.”
Not that it helped him win.
“The two times where I’ve failed drug tests for performance enhancers, it’s been so small that it can’t affect your performance,” Jones said. “For anybody who’s saying, ‘Well, he must have been cheating,’ it’s like, okay, after what I just said, if you still want to call me a cheater, then you just don’t want to admit that I’m fucking pretty good at this.”
We’ll see if Jones is still as good as he thinks when the cage door closes on Dec. 29 in “Sin City.” A win may or may not set up a trilogy against Cormier, or prompt that oft-teased move up to the heavyweight division.
Until then, he blinded us with science.