More of Jon Jones’ drug test results surrounding his UFC 214 fight with Daniel Cormier have come through, and they’re negative for any traces of banned substances. The tests, taken hours after Jones beat Cormier on July 29th, make his July 28 pre-fight failure for turinabol all the more confusing.
Jones and his team have been adamant that the light heavyweight champion never used performance enhancing drugs, and surprise USADA testing conducted on July 6th and 7th came out clean. Out of all the tests done surrounding the Jones-Cormier fight, only the standard pre-fight urine test came out positive.
“The problem that we’re having with that is that he passes all of the random tests,” his agent Malki Kawa said on the MMA Hour. “But then the one test that we know about, the one that we for sure know about, is the one that we fail? So, something here is not sitting right.”
The substance Jones tested positive for, turinabol, also raised a lot of eyebrows. The drug is an old school steroid used during Cold War era Olympics, not exactly the kind of thing you’d expect the best fighter in the UFC to be taking. But the world of performance enhancing drugs is mysterious and confusing. The turinabol might be part of a stack of substances that flush or mask or remain undetected together.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kV3_sw1qqXg
It’s also a cat and mouse game between drug users and testers, with new tactics and technology pushing things forward endlessly on both sides of the battle. There’s rumblings that USADA may have updated their testing methods in such a way that allowed them to catch the turinabol in the July 28th blood test, a method perhaps unavailable with the July 29th urine test.
The uncertainty surrounding all this may result in Jones getting a less career crushing suspension than the 4 years he’s currently facing through USADA. According to California State Athletic Commission executive director Andy Foster, the situation “doesn’t make any sense” based on all the negative tests surrounding the positive test. But unfortunately for Jones, he needs to present his case to both the CSAC and USADA.
Considering he just went through the USADA arbitration process a year ago for his failed clomiphene test, he may not find the organization particularly open to his explanations this time. Jones was suspended one year for that infraction, the maximum amount of time USADA could give him, due to the ‘recklessness’ Jones exhibited by taking mystery ‘dick pills’ given to him by a teammate. USADA also discovered that the teammate had bought pure clomiphene at the same time, making the whole thing rather suspicious.
In their final report, USADA said “the whole story told by the protagonists lacked the clear ring of truth and had rather the indistinct sound of contrivance.” Now Jones will have to reappear before USADA not even a year later to argue he’s the victim of wacky circumstances yet again. With the penalty for turinabol being two years, and a second drug violation doubling things to 4 years, he’ll need to do better than just point to the drug tests he managed to pass.
