Jon Jones is absolutely fearsome inside the Octagon, but that scariness is not new, according to Jones’ college roommate, Colby Covington. Speaking on Fox Sports’ MMA Roasted podcast, Covington discussed some of the shenanigans (and brawls) the two got into during their days at Iowa Central Community College.
“We got into a lot of trouble,” said Covington. “When you’re in a small town in Iowa, a lot of kids are farm kids, and they always wanted to start some stuff with the wrestlers…they’d always try to pick fights at our house parties and stuff. We would just clear out the place of a bunch of townies.”
According to Covington, things would sometimes go a bit further than that.
“Especially Jon. He’d be throwing people through windows and stuff. It was nuts. He has a bad temper. When he gets mad, he gets mad.”
Fans may remember that Covington is also a UFC fighter. Currently sitting on a 7-0 record, the 26-year-old made his UFC debut in August, scoring a first-round victory over Anying Wang in Macau. He followed that up just last week by defeating Wagner Silva Gomes in Brazil.
The talent in Jones’ dorm room didn’t end at Covington. Former Bellator featherweight champion and UFC bantamweight title contender Joe Soto also shared space with the duo. Soto wrestled for Iowa Central Community College for two seasons, achieving All-American status in 2006 and 2007.
For the most part, Jones seems to have worked out his youthful aggression. At age 27—and with the world at his fingertips—Jones has largely avoided the kind of trouble that can derail a young athlete’s success. His one brush with law enforcement came in the form of a DUI in 2012, when he crashed his Bentley into a phone pole in the early hours of the morning.
Still, the disgruntled Bones can sometimes shine through, as we saw in August when a staredown at a media event with Daniel Cormier erupted into one of the biggest extracurricular brawls in MMA history. That scrap wound up costing him $50,000 and 40 hours of his time for community service.
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