Chael Sonnen has been an outspoken critic of Jon Jones since news broke that Jones was off UFC 200 due to an unspecified USADA drug violation. When first asked by ESPN what he thought of the situation, he said, “If there’s one thing about us, we know our own.” Sonnen tested positive for a cocktail of performance enhancing drugs in 2014 that prompted his sudden retirement from the sport.
On Monday, Sonnen appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast and had more to say about Jones’ recent trouble. First, he made public what Jones and his team refused to comment on: the kind of drug Jon tested positive for. “He tested positive for some estrogen blockers, they don’t really have anything to do with anything, they don’t help, they’re silly,” Sonnen claimed. “He tested positive for two estrogen blockers.”
Later in the show, Joe asked Chael about the old rumor that Jon had once hidden under the cage at his gym to hide from a drug test.
“I wasn’t there but let’s tell the story,” Chael said. “USADA came in — this is just ‘the story’ — but this is from some of his teammates, UFC fighters that claim they were there, and that doesn’t make it true. But all the disclaimers aside, let’s get down to the entertainment side of this.”
“So USADA rolls into Jackson’s gym to do a test on Jon Jones and there was only some coaches in there and like five people at the time. So he can see them coming, where they parked they can see him coming, so they don’t know what to do with him so they hide him under the cage. Jon Jones hides under the cage. They tell them ‘Jon, we don’t know where he is.'”
“So anyways he hides under the ring, they say ‘Well where is he, this is his gym.’ They say ‘How would I know where he is?’ So instead of leaving like they thought they would do, they took a seat. Well, there’s like eight hours left in the business day, they don’t ever leave. However long, a six or eight hour time frame, Jon’s under the cage the entire time. So people are coming and going, the whole thing. Finally they close the lights and lock the door and now Jon can finally come out.”
“Well USADA found out. They didn’t do this — they wanted to get a warrant and go under that ring under the theory that at some point in that six to eight hour span he would have had to pee. They wanted to go under forensically and collect that urine. That’s how upset they were that they had been had.”
“Now I realize that we’re saying all the nice [disclaimer] stuff … that happened! How long was the time frame and all that, that part is something. But they were coming after him after that. When they found out that — hey don’t like when people say their test doesn’t work and they don’t like being duped. And they came after him.”
“Remember when I predicted Rumble versus Jones would not happen? That’s because I had that story and I knew USADA was looking for him. I knew they had boots on the ground in Albuquerque waiting for him to leave the club, to get him for anything. I was armed with that — that’s why I predicted that fight wouldn’t happen. I knew they were after him. And this is before we had to do the whereabouts like we do now. Back then it was just random and they were just waiting for the right time when they were gonna grab him.”
There’s a lot of questions regarding this story, one of the most obvious being if it’s even true at all. There could be elements of truth to it, and parts Chael got wrong. One thing he didn’t get right: it was the Nevada commission, not USADA, that was behind the random testing at the time. The story also implies Jones hid to hide PED use, when it’s just as likely he hid because he knew he’d test positive for cocaine or marijuana.
But there are other past aspects to the Jon Jones story that certainly raise questions in the wake of this failed drug test. Leading up to his first fight with Daniel Cormier at UFC 182, drug test results for Jones were released that had a few people going hmmmm. Victor Conte (of BALCO scandal fame) commented on how low Jon’s Testosterone to Epitestosterone ratio was, with a normal deviation being no more than 40 percent. Jon’s was 80 percent.
Meanwhile, Jones’ manager Malki Kawa was on the MMA Hour on Monday to defend Jones, and he said they’d be testing every supplement Jones took and every medication he was on to see how this positive test could have happened. Another fighter of Kawa’s had his suspension knocked down from two years to six months after proving to USADA that he had taken a tainted supplement, so it’s possible to do. That won’t turn the clock back and let Jones earn the eight-figure purse he was set to make off UFC 200, though. Based on fan reaction, it also might not change a lot of minds on how guilty he looks.
