For the first time since Jon Jones‘s failed drug test for a cocaine metabolite was made public earlier this month, the UFC light-heavyweight champion discussed the incident in detail last night, in a pre-taped interview with Charissa Thompson of FOX Sports Live. You can watch the entire segment above, which covers everything from Jones’s drug usage, to how he learned of the results, to his one-night stay in a rehab clinic. Some highlights…
On his December 4th drug test: “It was a nerve-racking day. I knew that I had done something wrong, and I knew that the test would show that…I knew it would be a positive test, I knew there was nothing I could do about it. I was stressed out about it, but I just thought I’d focus on what I could control, and that was just the fight.”
On poor decisions: “That’s the big question — ‘Why would you do that right before your fight?’ I definitely don’t have an excuse. I’m not here to make excuses for what happened. I did it, and basically, at a party. I think a coward would sit here and try to come up with this elaborate reason or try to blame something, and I’m not gonna do that. I’m not gonna blame my friends, I’m not gonna blame pressure or stress…but what I will say is, I messed up. It wasn’t a mistake, I can’t call it a mistake because I consciously did it.”
On his cocaine usage: “I had done it before, quite a few times in college I had experimented with it, but that’s really it. Mainly just college, it was something that I dipped and dabbed into a little bit, but it was never really an issue.”
Really? So you did cocaine in college and then did it this one time before a fight and got caught. No. Seriously? “Yeah, pretty much…I do not dab into cocaine, it’s not my thing at all. The night I did it, I was just…there’s no excuse, I really don’t know what came over me, what made me decide to make such a poor choice, but I did, and now I live with…I’m not a cocaine addict by any mean, or not even a frequent user. I just made a really dumb decision, just really got caught with my pants down in this whole situation, and you know, no excuse for it, I can just apologize and try to do things better.”
On public shame: “Cocaine is such a dirty drug, and the whole situation has been really embarrassing…I apologized to Dana, Lorenzo, to my family, to my brothers…my brothers were both really disappointed, I think I embarrassed them in the locker room, with their respective teams.”
On rehab: “I would say it was a collective decision between myself and some of my business partners. They thought it would be good. I told them right away, I was like, ‘Dude, I don’t have a drug problem I just got caught.’ They said, ‘Jon we don’t know if you have a drug problem or not.’ They said, ‘How about you go to rehab and let them decide on how healthy you are or whatnot.’ And I said okay, of course. So I went to a rehab facility and I did a 24-hour evaluation where I spoke to doctors, about three doctors for almost seven hours, and we talked about drugs, and the role its played in my life, and my upbringing, and they came to the conclusion that I didn’t need inpatient treatment…so they put me in an outpatient house, I stayed there the next day, the whole day, with a bunch of different addicts, and the counselor came to me at the house, and he set me down and said, ‘Hey Jon, I really believe that you made a big mistake, and that you don’t need to live here with us full time, but what I will do is continue to drug test you, and to come by your house about twice a week.’…They continue to test me on a weekly basis, and our counseling sessions will go anywhere from once, twice, three times a week.”
On moving forward: “The important thing is to learn when we fall down, and to get back up, and to not beat yourself up too hard about it, and to try to do things better…the best ways I can come back from this, really, is to continue being a winner, and to not let things like this happen again, and to learn. It’s not a defeat if you learn something.”
On his fans: “My message to my fans is that I’m sorry, that I’m really sorry for maybe betraying their belief, or just letting them down. I definitely have let myself down, my family, my team, the UFC, my fans down, and really it’s just a sincere apology.”