A new year was supposed to be a clean slate for the UFC after a disappointing 2014 full of fight cancellations, fighter injuries and subpar pay-per-view numbers among a handful of other issues. However, for a brief few days at the beginning of 2015, it appeared everything was trending up for the biggest and best mixed martial arts promotion in the world.
Jon Jones defended his light-heavyweight title for an eighth consecutive time at UFC 182 on Jan. 3 in Las Vegas in what was a financially successful show ($3.7-million live gate) that featured a headliner in which Jones beat bitter rival Daniel Cormier in a five-round war. The event was a perfect combination of anticipation, pre-fight production at its best and MMA at its most elite.
Then, a bombshell. A convoluted, cocaine-infused bombshell.
Related: UFC champion Jon Jones checks into rehab
On Tuesday evening, Kevin Iole of Yahoo! Sports, broke the news that Jones has checked himself into a drug treatment facility and had tested positive for cocaine metabolites in a random drug screening administered by the Nevada Athletic Commission (NAC) on Dec. 4.
The collective jaws of combat sports fans across the globe dropped, but that was just the first layer of what’s turning out to be quite a bewildering story.
After the initial report, the UFC released a statement supporting Jones and wishing him well in recovery, which was to be expected, but then questions began to mount: Why was Jones allowed to fight at UFC 182 in the first place if he failed a drug test the month prior? Why didn’t the NAC say anything? Did the UFC know about this before hand?
It turns out they did.
The NAC received Jones’s results on Dec. 23 and the commission’s chairman, Francisco Aguilar, informed the UFC of the failed test. UFC president Dana White confirmed this during an appearance on FOX Sports 1 Wednesday evening.
So, the promotion and the governing body were aware of the failed test and did nothing prior to UFC 182. How could that be?
It seems odd, but the fact is Jones technically didn’t break any rules. The commission follows guidelines set by the World Anti-Doping Agency, which doesn’t ban out-of-competition use of benzoylecgonine, the cocaine metabolite Jones popped for. Just so we’re clear, “out-of-competition” essentially means anything outside of a 12-hour window before or after a fight.
Since Jones didn’t test positive for a banned substance in the form of a performance-enhancing drug or anything of the sort, the NAC insists there was no legal grounds for them to prevent Jones from fighting.
White used the NAC as a scapegoat and went along with their explanation as to why Jones was still allowed to fight. And he did so without making it public, which was a cop-out.
White said the reasons they did not postpone the UFC 182 main event was because: (1) Jones was healthy and evaluated by doctors pre-fight; (2) Jones did not test positive for any PEDs.
It’s more logical, however, to think the reasons for the UFC 182 main event going on as scheduled were: (1) because it made the UFC and Nevada a whole pile of money; (2) Jones-Cormier was originally supposed to take place at UFC 178 last September, but it was postponed when Jones injured his knee. That postponement wasn’t good for business and the UFC sure as heck didn’t want to postpone this blockbuster bout a second time.
White also added that Jones had a contract and “the right to fight.” There are many elements of this ordeal that are problematic, but for now the main issue is one of optics because the UFC and NAC appear to be putting business ahead of everything else. If they really wanted to send a message that behaviour like Jones’s (read: testing positive for cocaine metabolites) is unacceptable, there were certainly ways for them to do so.
The UFC has a Code of Conduct that they’ve used in the past to fine and suspend fighters on issues that have nothing to do with athletic commissions and they chose not to follow it when they learned of Jones’s failed test. The UFC has the right to discipline any of its fighters for a number of reasons including substance abuse and “conduct that undermines or puts at risk the integrity and reputation of the UFC.” You’d think Jones, the UFC’s poster boy and consensus top pound-for-pound fighter, having cocaine metabolites in his system during a fight camp would fall under that category.
Also, under subsection 5 of item 467.885 in the NAC rulebook it states that a fighter can be punished if they conduct themselves at any time or place in a manner “which is deemed by the commission to reflect discredit to unarmed combat.” This is essentially a catch-all rule the commission can use to punish a fighter, meaning even though Jones didn’t break a specific rule they could’ve denied him a licence if they chose to.
Ironically, Jones wasn’t even supposed to be tested for street drugs on Dec. 4, but because of what NAC executive director Bob Bennett described to MMAFighting as an “administrative oversight,” he was.
Essentially what this boils down to is the fact UFC and NAC tried to sweep this whole thing under the rug and didn’t make a peep until the event was in the books.
In recent years, the UFC has done its best to clean up its image and become a legitimate, mainstream sports league akin to the NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB, but when they handle their business in this type of manner it has a negative impact on how people view the organization.
The UFC, with the help of the NAC, has made a huge mess of things early in 2015 in terms of its image and it doesn’t look like it’ll be a quick fix.