The story of Jon Jones is long, weird one. He was on top of the world, the undisputed champ, the shining light in what most saw as a dark time for the UFC, his only loss was a disqualification in a fight that he was dominating.
Than he was arrested for felony and fleeing the scene of the crime, not only that but the particular felony he committed involved him crashing his car into another vehicle, of which had a pregnant woman sitting inside, she was hurt in the accident, but came out alright later on.
He was stripped of his UFC title.
Here was the UFC’s post afterwards…
“UFC feels strongly that its athletes must uphold certain standards both in and out of the Octagon. While there is disappointment in the recent charges, the organization remains supportive of Jones as he works through the legal process.”
He then came back much later to fight Ovince St. Preux, a fight which he won, although not by much. During and after the fight people spoke of how much of a lesser fighter Jones seemed to be, less explosive, tiring earlier than normal, and other performance issues that hadn’t been seen before the suspension.
Daniel Cormier thinks that the lackluster performance against St. Preux had something to do with the lack of PEDs involved…
He also expects the absence of those drugs to affect Jones during their upcoming fight…
“You heard Alexander Gustafsson now is saying he believes that Jon was enhanced throughout his career,” Cormier said “But before, we had no sanctioning body like USADA. USADA now is on top of all that, so I do believe that we will see a different fighter in Anaheim, because I do believe he’ll have to be clean this time, otherwise he’ll be caught.”
“I think he fought Ovince Saint Preux clean, and he didn’t like the way he felt, and tried to do something again dirty and he got caught at UFC 200,” Cormier said.
“I think he will still be very tough, because he has a ton of skill, he’s very quick, he’s very long, he’s got a lot of physical advantages that a lot of us don’t have,” Cormier said. “I think what you will see is he will be a little more tentative, he may not be as aggressive as in some places. … I think you’ll see is a guy in the beginning of his career where he actually started to tire. He got tired just beating on Stephen Bonnar,’ he concluded.