If you’ve thought to yourself: I’ve never seen anything quite like Jon Jones—or something to that effect—you might be right.
It would be easy to mistake him for some otherworldly thing. Having had the chance, on more than one occasion, to watch Jones inside the walls of Greg Jackson’s MMA gym in Albuquerque, New Mexico, I can confirm that he breathes and sweats just like the rest of us.
But if you focus on Jones moving across the tattered mat just long enough, you quickly realize you’re looking at someone who doesn’t move through space and time like the rest of us.
He’s the most savage fighter alive and possibly the smartest one we’ve seen.
He’s also nearly a tragic figure.
That is, if you consider a transcendent athlete flying too close to the sun to be a tragedy. He’s yet to cross that point of no return. Jones’ wings haven’t been burnt off, but they’ve certainly absorbed some serious heat as of late. He likely doesn’t have a death wish, but he’s been walking on razor’s edge longer than anyone should.
He’s a man-child among men who became the youngest champion in UFC history at 23 years old. Before his recent troubles, he had trailed only Georges St-Pierre and Anderson Silva for most consecutive title defenses. He was on his way to breaking the record.
And then, one more time, he got in his own way.
His most recent run-in—an alleged hit-and-run, where according to an eyewitness off-duty police officer Jones crashed into a car with a pregnant woman behind the wheel—was a final straw of sorts for the UFC. Despite not having a reputation for its discipline, the organization stripped him of his light heavyweight belt and suspended him indefinitely.
It was a bold dropping of the hammer that caught many off guard, even though we all knew it was the UFC’s only real option.
In an Albuquerque courtroom last month, I sat on a bench directly behind Jones. He towered over everyone, including the judge he stood before to face his felony charge. Contemplation of what it would be like to be caged hung in the air, and not the kind of cage in which he’s built his legacy.
It’s possible Jones’ downward spiral hasn’t stopped.
Where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire. And where there’s fire, there’s usually much more of it hidden in plain sight. Rumors have swirled within the MMA community for years of Jones and his wayward ways. Every so often I’d get pulled into the latest round of “did you hear?” surrounding Jones.
On the other hand, he could be in the process of putting himself back together, a phoenix rising from the ashes of his own undoing. We can all hope for the former and not the latter, because we want to see Jones resume his destructive ways inside the Octagon.
It’s hard to fathom that the man many already consider the greatest mixed martial artist of all time was not training in the sport full-time.
As it stood, Jones was only in Albuquerque for the duration of his training camps. He would rent a different house in a different part of town each time he made the trek down here from his hometown of Rochester, New York.
The rest of the time he was kicking it in upstate New York. He’s admitted that when he was back home, he wasn’t training on a regular basis.
But after his UFC 182 win over Daniel Cormier back in January, Jones indicated he was planning a permanent move to Albuquerque and committing himself to year-round training.
So Jones made the move down to Albuquerque with the right intentions, only to paint himself into a corner so bad that it forced the UFC to sideline him indefinitely. Will he make his return?
Current teammate Carlos Condit recently told Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour that he’d seen Jones around the gym a bit. He passed on what Jones said to him: that he’d be back. Someone at the gym here told me that Jones was “laser focused” on his comeback.
What if Jones could once and for all shuck off whatever has been causing him to break bad? What if he can fully dial in and commit to training full-time?
Could he possibly come out the other side even better than he’s been for the last seven years? That’s both a scary and delightful proposition.
I first met him back in 2009 after UFC 100. On the Las Vegas strip, I ran into him and his brothers heading toward some after-party. We bantered before going our separate ways.
In that moment, I was struck with a knowing that he was going to do something big with his career. He had a magnetism, a magnetic field around him created by electrons that I now know charge through space and time differently than the rest of ours.
Jones has been silent on social media since April 28.
The once-active tweeter and Instagram user signed off on that day with “Got a lot of soul searching to do. Sorry to everyone I’ve let down.” Like any of us are capable of doing, he got lost in this plastic world.
His Twitter avatar is a lion licking its lips. Jones is either at his new home in Albuquerque or possibly in upstate New York, lying low and licking his wounds. He’s burning off the stone.
He’ll be back. He knows he has no other choice but to stage his second act. And if his second act is even better than the first?
Well, that would force us all to reimagine what greatness looks like.
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