Depending on who you ask, Jon Jones has had a rough 2015. He started the year out as champion, but was then stripped of his title after a hit-and-run accident involving a pregnant woman and drugs in his car. The case moved its way through the court system and ended up working out pretty well for him — he received parole and community service and won’t have a felony on his record if he completes them both satisfactorily. The UFC lifted his suspension and he’s currently talking about an April return.
But first, he’s doing what many athletes do after going through a damaging PR incident: making the rounds with the press to talk about what happened. His first big media interview was with MMA Fighting’s Ariel Helwani, and the two spent an hour talking about the lead-up to the accident and then the accident himself. Here’s what Jon had to say about how it all went down:
I went to a party… lot of heavy drinking going on. I go to bed thinking obviously you don’t drink and drive. None of my friends are going to allow me to get another DWI. So, I go to bed and I wake up the next morning. Everybody is gone from the house party and my boy and his wife are there. And I’m thinking to myself, “This guy has a kid and a family, I should probably leave this party.” Well, it’s obviously not a party anymore.
So, I get in my car and was definitely still really tired. Get in my car and I remember being at a red light and I had my music going. Texting on my cellphone. And I see the light turn green, and I assumed it was my green light, but really, it was a green light for people that were going straight in traffic, and I was actually turning. So, I just stepped on the gas when I saw the green light and I found myself driving right into oncoming traffic.
I just felt to myself, man, I went out last night, I haven’t been home yet, I probably still smell like the night before. I need to get myself out of here. This is gonna be terrible, this is gonna be messy. I gotta go. I was afraid, man. I freaked out. I was afraid to talk to the police at the time. So, I just thought I had to get away from this.
Jones also denied the version of the story that claims he had gone a significant distance from the car before returning to grab a random stack of cash, saying he turned around almost immediately to look for the pot the police eventually found.
I got like five yards away from the car and I remember that I had a bowl, a marijuana bowl in my cup holder. And so I knew that if the police found that bowl in my car, then everything was going to be so much worse than I thought it should be. And so I ran back, glanced at the cup holder, and the bowl had flown somewhere in the car and I just took off running again.
This certainly makes more sense than the original story, because money ain’t illegal, but weed is. It still seems crazy that Jones would have a loaded bowl sitting in his cup holder. Standard operating procedure for him? Does he drive high? Just another factor that could have played into this accident. Driving while hung over? Check. Texting while driving? Another check.
Was he high on weed? Would he have failed another drug test for cocaine? Running from the scene of the crime saved him from having those questions answered. And considering he’s already back in the UFC with a slap on the wrist from the law, you could argue that sprint into the hills of Albuquerque was the smartest thing he did that day.