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This past Saturday Night I was getting ready to hit the bed for a good nights sleep after watching a solid UFC 186 pay-per-view. UFC Flyweight Champion Demetrious Johnson just broke the UFC record for latest finish in a title fight (4:59 of Round 5) and all was well within the MMA universe...then I woke up Sunday morning.
Sunday morning was the start of a sad turn of events for a man, who was at that point, the UFC Light Heavyweight Champion in Jon Jones. In a brief recap, Jones crashed his vehicle into that of a pregnant woman’s early Sunday morning, the pregnant woman wound up with a broken arm and Jones wound up fleeing the scene with pot in his vehicle and a wad of cash in his hands. Jones in what would become a rash of terrible decisions, waited more than a day before turning himself in to the Albuquerque (NM) authorities.
The UFC, facing what could easily be one of the biggest scandals, from a publicity point of view, had to act quickly and they did. UFC President Dana White appeared on Fox Sports 1, announcing that Jones was stripped of the UFC Light Heavyweight Title, suspended indefinitely from the UFC and was removed from the official UFC rankings (light heavyweight and pound for pound). Reebok was quick to act as well and they terminated the contract of Jones, which cost Jones an unknown amount of cash.
This is not Jones first brush with bad choices during his tenure in the UFC, as he has been charged with a DUI, driving with a suspended license and failing a drug test for cocaine prior to his bout against Daniel Cormier at UFC 182. The question becomes what can be done to help Jones, who has seemingly fallen down a bigger and bigger hole since his popularity in the MMA world started to rise?
Jones and those around him should have seen the white flag being raised in a major way when he failed his first drug test for cocaine prior to UFC 182. At first it seemed like the fighter was on the path to recovery as he was going to rehab to cure himself of his ailment. Then the stupidity demon seemingly crawled up Jones as Jones left a rehab facility in just over a single day, raising the ire of not just MMA fighters, but everybody else in the MMA world.
A cocaine habit takes more than just a day in rehab to defeat, it takes a lot of time and personal work to overcome that addiction, but somebody apparently forgot to tell Jones that. In fact, the fight that Jones was removed from (against Anthony Johnson at UFC 187) would have been Jones first bout since his initial drug test failure (granted it was an out of competition test). Jones had stayed out of trouble since that laughable day at rehab and his image was slowly on the upswing, then disaster struck one Sunday morning and everything went down the crapper.
Jones now has a seemingly unlimited amount of time to deal with all the issues causing his latest meltdown and he needs to do it before its too late. Lets forget about Jon Jones the fighter real quick and just think about Jon Jones the person, who not only needs to help himself for his own health reasons, but has a family to support as well. Jones has a fiance and three daughters, who probably do not care in the least if Jones is a UFC champion, but would rather see him healthy in the end.
Now to the perennial question on the mind of most MMA fans...when should Jon Jones be allowed back into the UFC? To me, Jones has to pass five huge test’s before the worlds biggest MMA organization allows him back into the octagon. Those three proposed (by me) test’s Jones has to pass are…
1. Jones has to properly deal with all legal manners resulting from his Sunday morning hit and run.
2. Jones has to enter rehab for an appropriate amount of time to deal with any drug, alcohol and other personal problems.
3. Jones has to pass a random monthly drug test issued by the UFC for one year.
Nobody in this world is perfect and we all screw up from time to time, but Jon Jones is a celebrity with a public persona. With that public persona comes a heightened perception and while that may be hard for Jones to live up to, but that is the life he chose when he became an MMA fighter and even more so when he signed with the UFC.
Jones has all the time in the world right now to deal with all those issues that lead to his disastrous Sunday morning hit and run. Let’s all just hope that the next time we hear about the former UFC Light Heavyweight Champion, we hear about the reformed and once again great champion, not the man whose terrifying actions not only put a pregnant woman in the hospital, but may have tarnished his image forever.
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Contact me at bigteesps3@yahoo.com
