No matter what the pundits and naysayers believe, Jon Jones insists he's been a clean athlete his entire UFC career.
Former two-division champion Jones (28-1 MMA, 22-1 UFC) is widely considered the greatest fighter of all time. The only asterisk that has the likes of Daniel Cormier saying he's not is his history of failed drug tests.
Jones tested positive for estrogen blockers clomiphene and letrozole after he defeated Ovince Saint Preux in 2016, resulting in him being stripped of his UFC light heavyweight title. Jones then tested positive for a turinabol metabolite after knocking out Cormier in their rematch in July 2017 at UFC 214, resulting in his win being overturned to a no contest.
In both instances, an independent arbitrator determined that
Jones did not knowingly cheat.
A trace amount, 33 picograms, of the M3 metabolite of oral turinabol was found in Jones' system one day prior to finishing Alexander Gustafsson on Dec. 29, 2018 at UFC 232. Since his following tests all came back negative, Jones wasn't disciplined after the World Anti-Doping agency-approved laboratory certified that they weren't performance-enhancing. It was concluded that the picograms were a "pulsing effect" from the M3 metabolite detected in his 2017 test.
"Never took steroids," Jones said in an interview with ALF Global. "It was a supplement found in my body. It was proven to come from a supplement company that I was using. It was a tainted supplement that I was using. The amount of this substance that was in my body was so small that it took very expensive scientists to be able to even find it, and the supplement that was found in my body has zero performance-enhancing effects – zero. And that's very well documented.
"For some reason, the fans ignore all that, and they're like, 'Something about steroids, he's guilty.' I never did, and that was proven. It's funny because fighters are like, 'Jon Jones is a knucklehead, but he's brilliant enough to do steroids and trick the UFC's scientists.' It's like, which one is it? Am I the knucklehead or the mad genius, who somehow got away with using steroids?"
Since being cleared of wrong doing in his fight against Gustafsson, Jones would go on to fight five more times in the UFC with no drug-test issues.
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Jon Jones insists he never took steroids – 'and that was proven'
