Jon Jones Admits He Used To Get Blackout Drunk Leading Up To His Fights

For a man serving a year-long suspension from the sport of MMA, Jon Jones is keeping himself busy. He’s got a grappling match against Dan Henderson on December 11th under Chael Sonnen’s Submission Underground promotion. And today he decided to make an appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast to address all the controversy surrounding his last second removal from UFC 200 over “dick pills.”

Jones recently claimed on Twitter that he’s up to 15 months of sobriety, and maybe it’s that distance that’s allowed him to open up about the serious problems he seems to have with substances, be they cocaine or alcohol. The cocaine thing blew up in his face when traces of the metabolite showed up in a drug test at the start of 2015. But it turns out he was playing an even more dangerous game with alcohol at the same time. Via MMA Fighting:

“I literally would, one week before every fight,” Jones said. “I would go out and I would get blacked out wasted. And my logic was, if this guy were to beat me somehow, I can look myself in the mirror and say, the reason I lost is because I got hammered the week before the fight.”

“I trained for the [Gustafsson] fight, but I definitely had this thing where I felt invincible,” Jones said. “And I did a lot of wild stuff leading up to the fight. I definitely didn’t give it my all. Really partying, drinking, staying up all night.”

“My relationship with alcohol was never healthy, and I never went through a period in which I had a mature, healthy, responsible relationship with it.”

This all led up to a hung over drive home from a party that turned into a car crash that then escalated further into a hit-and-run as Jones fled the scene of the crime. That behavior resulted in the stripping of his title and 18 months of supervised probation. Many hoped this would finally be the wake up call that would get Jones’ head straight and back into the fight game. But then he took some mystery sex pills a teammate gave him and ended up right back on the sidelines for another year.

Jon may not be able to stay out of trouble, but at least he seems to be learning from past mistakes? Another couple of years and he’ll have screwed himself over in every way possible, and maybe then he can finally get back to cementing his legacy as the best fighter in the UFC. We hope. I’d rather be writing about Jones fighting in the Octagon than the fights with his demons.

(via MMA Fighting)

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