PED champ? Jones defends ‘innocence’ despite past drug test failures

Jon Jones continues to question why he should bother fighting Tom Aspinall after he takes on Stipe Miocic at UFC 309 in November.

The heavyweight champion has argued he only wants the biggest fights that will solidify his legacy as the greatest to ever do it. Interim champ Aspinall, he says, is just the next guy in line, nothing special. Certainly nothing to delay a retirement or possible superfight with Alex Pereira over.

“I absolutely guarantee he will not win more world championships than me,” Jones wrote on Instagram recently. “That’s truly all that matters at the end of the day.”

“Jon’s right,” Aspinall fired back. “He’s won so many more world championships than me … while using PEDs.”

In a late night chat with fans on X (formerly Twitter), Jones dismissed Aspinall’s comment.

“Worked my ass to prove my innocence. Now picograms are legal in our sport,” he wrote. “Honestly, none of that will matter a few years from now when I’m covering my kids tuition. You guys still laughing about what happened at the office, I’m outside on a golf cart.”

But did Jon Jones ever really prove his innocence? Back when G.O.A.T. status was still up for debate, fans would point to Jones’ several sketchy moments regarding steroids and performance enhancing drugs. There was the urban legend shared by Chael Sonnen of Jones hiding under the cage at his gym to avoid drug testers — which “Bones” admitted actually happened! Jon claims he’d ‘just smoked a blunt and was afraid I would fail my test for weed,’ but weed wasn’t even illegal out of competition at the time.

Then there was a series of suspicious drug test results for his first fight with Daniel Cormier in 2015. Three tests collected by the Nevada commission showed abnormally low testosterone and T/E ratios for Jones.

“If they see a deviation in the T/E ratio of greater than 30 percent, there is something up. That’s a red flag,” infamous BALCO steroid dealer Victor Conte said. “If you look at the numbers for Jon Jones, his was basically an 80 percent deviation … The question is what was suppressing his testosterone production for that period of time. Something caused it to go down, and I do not believe it was overtraining.”

It’s worth noting that Jones didn’t technically fail those drug tests — despite the suspicious levels, they came back clean for PEDs.

That wasn’t the case for a June 2016 test which came back positive for clomiphene and letrozole. Jones would later claim this failure was caused by tainted ‘boner pills’ given to him by a teammate, but USADA officials had serious questions regarding those claims.

“Neither [written] declaration, whose drafting appears to have been coordinated by [Jones manager] Malki Kawa, referred to anything like the detail of their oral statements,” an arbitration panel stated. “Which were themselves not wholly consistent as to what happened, where and when, on the evening in question.”

Worse, when the source of the tainted off-brand Cialis Jones took was tracked down (online PED seller AllAmericanPetptide.com), the invoice included an order of clomiphene on it!

The USADA arbitration panel “concluded Jones’ degree of fault was at the very top end of the scale” and suspended him for one year.

“I have always maintained my innocence, and I am very happy I have been cleared in any wrongdoing pursuant to the allegations made that I had intentionally taken a banned substance,” Jones said in a statement at the time. “I am pleased that in USADA’s investigation they determined I was ‘not a cheater of the sport.’”

Jones would once again end up embroiled in another steroid scandal in 2017 when he failed a drug test for turinabol following a second fight against Daniel Cormer. Jones faced a four year ban for this latest positive test, but his suspension was eventually lowered to 15 months after he provided unspecified ‘substantial assistance’ to USADA.

In 2018, picograms of turinabol metabolite appeared in several tests, nearly derailing his career again. Experts concluded that the ‘pulsing’ picograms were a result of his 2017 use, which he’d already been punished for. As Jones mentioned in his recent tweet, changes were made to some drug testing protocols after that incident to recognize this phenomena, and some minimum allowable levels for substances were raised above the picogram (one-trillionth of a gram) level.

With so many drug test failures and abnormalities over the years, it’s hard for us to agree with Jones that he’s proven his innocence when it comes to PED accusations. What do you think, Maniacs? Let us know in the comments below!