Skip to 100:30 for the meat and potatoes.
Former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) light heavyweight champion, Jon Jones, was forced to answer for his positive drug test at UFC 214 in today’s (Feb. 27, 2018) disciplinary hearing in front of California State Athletic Commission (CSAC).
Watch the video replay here.
The end result was a revocation of his fight license and a monetary fine of $205,000 (details here), but there may be another price to pay after “Bones” unwittingly incriminated himself on two separate (but ultimately related) occasions.
As with most hearings, a majority of the questions were softballs, and a fighter of Jones’ intelligence easily put them over the fence. But neither he nor his lawyer were prepared for the line of questioning from commissioner Martha Shen-Urquidez, a former attorney and court-appointed arbitrator who ran through Jones like Forrest Griffin ran through the back exit of Philadelphia’s Wachovia Center.
It was savage.
“By the way, UFC gave you a Bentley. And you wrapped that around a utility pole did you not?” — Martha Shen-Urquidez, CSAC commisioner
— Brett Okamoto (@bokamotoESPN) February 27, 2018
Yes, yes he did.
During her interrogation, Shen-Urquidez was able to get Jones to admit he failed to report 10 supplements to United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) prior to his performance at UFC 214, despite signing a document that said he did, and that he only disclosed their existence when they were sent to the lab to be tested for banned substances.
And it was not his first offense.
In addition, Jones admitted he never watched mandated tutorials provided by USADA, instead passing them off to his management to take in his place. That’s essentially paying someone else do your homework, then turning it in the next morning to get the credit.
Why does it matter?
Because Jones will have to present a compelling case to USADA — hired by UFC to supplement existing regulation — in the next few weeks to demonstrate how science, not scandal, is the reason he popped for Turinabol.
Kind of hard to do when you don’t follow protocol from day one.
Whether or not USADA takes that into consideration when contemplating a possible suspension is unknown, but it certainly robs Jones of the squeaky clean, play-by-the-rules defense he was peddling prior to Tuesday’s CSAC hearing.
It seems “Bones” just can’t get out of his own way.