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I don’t know about you but I can’t recall a more tragic sports figure than Jon Jones, and just to be clear, I mean tragic in the Greek sense of the word. You know, the not too terrible villain who can’t see that his actions have caused the plight in which he finds himself and slowly realizes the error of his ways while evoking both pity and fear for the audience watching the drama unfold.
The Jones story has a whole bunch of the elements that make up a good old-fashioned Greek tragedy. We have the prologue: the emergence of Jones as a prodigious talent, rising through the rankings with vicious efficiency, battering all comers.
Then, as the action builds, we start to encounter the complications that will lead us to the eventual climax of the story. The first chink in the armor of our hero manifests itself when we see him slip the proverbial dagger into a teammate’s back to get his initial crack at the Ultimate Fighting Championship light heavyweight crown. We all understood why and some of us even sided with him, but for many, this was the genesis of the unbridled hate for Jones that some fans have deep within the recesses of their hearts.
Our tragic hero spirals out of favor with more and more fans because of a less-than-authentic public persona. Let’s face it, Jones was a chameleon, presenting the person he thought people wanted, not the person he was in reality. It was so bad at times that it became insulting that he thought people were buying it. We got a hint of the bad boy buried just under the surface of the choirboy façade when he slammed his Bentley into a pole in upstate New York in 2012. Who would have known this was just the tip of the iceberg for the clean-cut gentleman from Endicott?
Rashad Evans knew. Around the time he was yanking that proverbial dagger out of his back, Evans told anyone and everyone who would listen that Jones was not the man he was trying to make the public believe he was. The “fake” tag was something that irked Jones, but it was a description he just couldn’t shake, no matter how good he was in the cage.
With public sentiment mounting against him, along came UFC 151. Jones was supposed to defend his title against legendary hitter and all-American poster boy Dan Henderson. Well, Henderson was forced to pull out due to injury, and when the champion declined to entertain a fight with Chael Sonnen on a week’s notice, the entire MMA world, led by UFC President Dana White, brought the out the hammers and chisels. They sculpted what was left of Jones’ reputation into an ugly, unrepentant, uncaring, selfish dick.
And to think I thought this was going to be the low point of Jones’s career. Nope. Not even close.
A positive test for cocaine came in late 2014 as the champion was gearing up to face Daniel Cormier for the first time. The fact that the test should have never become public was just another twist in the tragic tale. Jones, as he has been so apt to do, blew through another opponent despite the fact that his world was in chaos all around him. The chaos that surrounded Jones morphed into an uncontrollable whirlwind on the morning of April 26, 2015. Jones blew through a red light and smashed into a car carrying a pregnant woman. Rather than check on his victim, Jones fled the scene, only to return to grab a stack of cash before hightailing it again. All of our fears about the person that Jones actually is were realized.
Jones was stripped of his title, banished from the UFC indefinitely and publicly crucified -- and rightly so -- for his horrific actions in the wake of the accident. After telling the UFC brass he wasn’t sure he ever wanted to step into the cage again, he went into seclusion in hopes of putting his life and eventually his career back together again.
This is the point in many stories where the redemption aspect of a tale begins to unfold. It was no different for Jones. He cleaned up his life, we were told, found a new focus in his family and career and was ready to return just under a year after he was unceremoniously dumped as champion. He had jettisoned the anchors weighing him down. The “friends” that only wanted to be around because he was the champ, the leeches that were there for the free drinks or the drugs, were no longer welcome.
It was time for Jones to grow up and show the world who he truly was. Had we reached the climax of the story? Was Jones really on the straight and narrow? Not quite, not just yet.
A couple of traffic incidents in Albuquerque, New Mexico, while he was preparing for his return set off alarm bells for some, but after a quick resolution, it was back to business for the former champ. He took on Ovince St. Preux at UFC 197, besting the man who had stepped in for Cormier on 22 days’ notice. The lackluster performance in April was attributed to the late change in opponent and the time away from competition. With that said, he was going to have to clean things up in his rematch against Cormier, the man holding a title belt Jones still viewed as his own.
In a weird swerve towards the absurd, Jones seemed to have swung public opinion in his favor as he readied to face Cormier again at UFC 200. Take a moment to understand that. Here he is, all his faults in plain sight, sitting beside the embodiment of the good guy in Cormier. That fans were embracing Jones was, to put it mildly, a huge shocker. Surely we’d finally reached the denouement of our story. Jones was going to win back his title, move to heavyweight and clean out that wasteland of a division and ride off into the sunset after authoring one of the greatest redemption stories of all-time. Or so I thought.
The announcement late Wednesday that Jones had been flagged for a potential violation by the United States Anti-Doping Agency throws that narrative right straight into the shredder; and the farcical press conference the former champ held Thursday morning with his “Crisis Management” team did little to engender any confidence that Jones will be able to overcome this Himalayan-sized speed bump between him and his eventual legacy. Not only that, but with this development, I have no idea where we are on the Freytag Plot Triangle. Will this story eventually play out like the Greek tragedies? Will the protagonist finally realize that his own actions are what led him to potential ruin?
Surely he deserves the due process he will be afforded, but it is hard to see any other outcome than some sort of ban, the stripping of his interim title and a reprieve for Cormier, who gets to stay champion for a while longer -- probably somewhere along the lines of two more years.
Sherdog.com Executive Editor Greg Savage can be reached by email or via Twitter @TheSavageTruth.