Jones may not be returning to the main Jackson-Wink MMA facility, but that doesn’t mean he’s going far.
Well, he couldn’t just keep training out of his garage, could he?
Jon Jones had an unexpected split with the Jackson-Wink gym last month, which had been the backbone of his MMA training for much of his recent MMA career. That split came after Jones was banned from the facility, following his recent domestic violence related arrest in Las Vegas.
“I just had a conversation with him,” Mike Winklejohn said of the decision to ban Jones from Jackson-Wink, during an interview last month on the MMA Hour. “I said, ‘Jon, here’s the deal, man. You’re like my little brother. You have to stop drinking and fix these things for a certain period of time until you come back to the gym.’ So at the moment, he’s out of the gym. He’s not allowed to come in the gym because I feel I had to do that. Ignoring it and expecting different results is insanity.”
Jones, for his part, has since trumpeted the success he’s been having working on his own, and running training sessions out of his garage. But for a fighter with designs on becoming heavyweight champion sometime in the near future, that hardly seemed like a situation he could stay in for long.
And now it appears Jones has indeed found a new training home. The former long-reigning light heavyweight champ recently took to Instagram to proclaim that he had moved his training to Jackson’s MMA Acoma. The smaller affiliate facility, run by former MMA fighter Nick Urso, is located on the Albuquerque outskirts—just 12 miles east of the more notable basecamp.
“I want to sincerely thank Gym owner/coach Nick Urso and everyone at the original Jackson’s MMA program for allowing me to call their dojo my new home base,” Jones wrote on social media. “I was so proud to see the condition of the gym, it was so well taken care of and the energy felt amazing exactly the way it was before. It has wonderful memories of my time learning from GSP, Sugar Evans, The dean of mean and so many more. I won my first world title out of this gym. I am grateful to have this comfortable place for both my local and visiting training partners to come enjoy. The best is yet to come!”
No word yet on when Jones might return to the Octagon. He’s been embroiled in a months long dispute with the UFC in an attempt to renegotiate his contract with the promotion as a part of his move to the heavyweight division. In recent months, both Jones and Dana White have sounded more sure that they will eventually come to some agreement that will see him in competition once more. Back in September, just hours before his arrest, Jones told reporters he expected to return to fighting sometime in late-spring, early-summer of next year. Whether or not that plan is still in place is unclear at this time.