When Jon Jones made the comment to MMAFighting.com over the weekend that he is “expecting to be back in the Octagon really soon,” the MMA community was left scratching their heads in confusion. On Tuesday, UFC President Dana White made some sense of the situation.
White appeared on “The Jim Rome Show” today and revealed that Jones apparently did not take the drug that everyone thinks he took, which resulted in him testing positive for banned substances and being pulled from his scheduled UFC Light Heavyweight Title unification bout against Daniel Cormier in the main event of the historic UFC 200 pay-per-view in July.
While White didn’t get too deep into the specifics, as he even questioned if he should be talking about the subject publicly, he did mention that it appears whatever Jones took wasn’t the drug that fighters take when coming off of a steroid cycle, which was originally believed to be the case.
“Well, it’s coming back now that it looks like he did not take the supplement that everybody thought he took,” White told Jim Rome during his appearance on his radio program on Tuesday. “We’ll see how this thing plays out.”
White continued, “I don’t even know if this is public. I didn’t know if I can talk about it. Normally, I talk about anything, but when it comes to medical stuff, you can’t do it. It’s looking like Jon Jones did not take the drug everybody thought he took. It looks like it’s something else. I’ll let this thing play out and if that’s true and that’s what USADA and the Nevada State Athletic Commission say happened, it could look good for Jon Jones.”
Even with this newfound information, White insists that “Bones” Jones didn’t get a bum rap, as he pointed out the fact that the former UFC Light Heavyweight Champion does still have a responsibility to disclose any supplements or medication he is using to USADA.
“He didn’t get a bum wrap,” said White. “He definitely didn’t get a bum wrap, but the substance that he was on, it was a pill that you take when you’re coming off of steroids. But this thing is apparently in other things. Jon took something else. Where he doesn’t come off clean is you have to tell USADA everything that you put in your body leading up to the fight and he did not.”
H/T to MMAFighting.com for transcribing the above Dana White quotes from his appearance on “The Jim Rome Show.”