The former UFC champion turned the gym into a bloodbath during a stunt gone wrong.
Steve-O, of Jackass fame, recently appeared on Daniel Cormier’s Multifaceted podcast. During that appearance he shared a wild story about former UFC light heavyweight champion—and longtime Cormier rival—Jon Jones.
And the story is not for the faint of heart.
“Jon Jones had a try at giving me cauliflower ear,” Steve-O recalled (ht MMA Mania). “So we’re at Jon Jones’ house and he’s got these barbells with the weights. We put my ear in between the weights, the big round ones on the thing and he’s elbowing them and my ear comes out of there and he says ‘that’s it, you’ve got it, that’s cauliflower ear’, and then a few days later, nothing happened.”
Steve-O said he met up with Jones again, eager to earn some real cauliflower ears.
“So the last thing we did, on one of his workout machines I put my ear on the metal base bar,” he continued. “He puts his light heavyweight championship belt and he puts in on my ear on this metal thing and he’s hitting it with a hammer.
“A full blown, Home Depot hammer and it seems like everything’s cool and in this footage the hammer hits it and all of a sudden, one hit, blood just splatters from underneath this belt. We all freaked out.
“We look and sure enough my ear is blasted to where a whole piece of my ear is just hanging down. And it’s the most intense thing you’ve ever seen, we got a pair of scissors and just chopped off this whole piece of my ear. Jon did it, Jon chopped it, just one piece.”
Steve-O said that footage of the stunt is included in his live ‘Bucket List’ tour.
“Thank god I got that footage with Jon Jones because, dude, it’s epic. The blood splatters everywhere, he cuts the piece off my ear and it’s the best of both worlds because the footage is insane because I don’t have to deal with actually having cauliflower ear.”
Jones hasn’t fought since early 2020. Now that charges of domestic battery involving his former fiancee have been dropped by prosecutors in Nevada, it’s expected he will make a return in the near future.
Prior to his most recent arrest, Jones—having vacated his UFC light heavyweight title—was angling for a fight with current UFC heavyweight champ Francis Ngannou.
Recently, it had been rumoured that Jones may return to face ex-champ Stipe Miocic for an interim title.