Troubled former UFC light heavyweight champion Jon “Bones” Jones has been to the highest of highs to the lowest of lows during his life and career.
In early 2015, Jones was alleged to be involved in a hit and run car accident. A crime that resulted in the UFC stripping him of the light heavyweight title and suspending him indefinitely. In September Jones plead guilty to one felony count of leaving the scene of a crash, which resulted in Jones being convicted of a 4th-degree felony. He will have supervised probation for up to 18 months. The judge ordered Jones to make 72 appearances as part of his probation.
Jones was then jailed last week due to violating his probation standards after receiving multiple traffic violations.
Still Jones is one of the most popular and best fighters the UFC currently has under contract. Jones recently spoke with Rolling Stone about his troubles. When asked about his hit and run car accident, Jones said he wanted to retire from MMA.
“I wanted to retire. I wanted to quit. I wanted to go away. I wanted to move to Mexico. I wanted to erase my Twitter, Instagram and Facebook so no one would be able to see me,” he says. “I wanted to never do an interview again. I wanted my fans to think, ‘What ever happened to Jon Jones?’ I wanted to disappear from celebrity life all together.”
“It was a reality check,” he says. “That’s really what it all boils down to for me. It was the day that I realized that life wasn’t all fun and games, there are consequences for your actions.”
When asked about how his life went downhill, Jones blames it on people and self-medicating.
“I really started to get money, started to be able to afford to go out, to have a good time and buy people drinks,” he says. “Growing up, I was poor. In college I was poor. I never had anything. Then I go from living in a basement to renting out a house. My life just started to change so fast.”
“I’ve been slowly self-destructing,” he says. “Self-medicating myself, smoking pot all day. Most people don’t look at pot as a problem. ‘Oh, it’s just pot. It’s going to be legal soon. How can you be a pot addict?’ The truth is, you can be a pot addict. If that’s what you do when you wake up, before you play video games, before you train, before you study footage, before you go to sleep, you’re smoking weed all day long.
“I had a problem self-medicating myself and not dealing with real emotions. I got in the limelight at a young age. At age 19, people were already comparing me to Anderson Silva. I had two brothers that were destined to be in the NFL. I knew I never wanted to be the brother that wasn’t a pro athlete,” he continues. “There’s pressure to be one of the successful brothers [and] not the one that didn’t make it. I always put pressure on myself. I think somewhere along the line my relationship with marijuana just got stronger and stronger, and it was something I depended on and leaned on.”
Jones is set to fight No. 6-ranked Ovince St. Preux at UFC 197.
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