Jon Jones’ Attorney Says USADA Confirmed Product He Used Was Contaminated

In an interview with Sirius XM Radio’s The Luke Thomas Show (via MMA Fighting), Jon Jones’ attorney Howard Jacobs claims that the USADA has independent tested a product Jones used and confirmed that it was contaminated. That’s why banned substances showed up in his drug tests before UFC 200. The product was reportedly not labeled properly. Here are highlights:

On finding out why his test results had banned substances: “We’ve been able to establish the source of the prohibited substances. It came from a product that Jon took that was not labelled with either of these substances. We had it tested, the product was contaminated with both of them. I know USADA also independently had the product tested; their testing confirms what we found. We then sent essentially the same pills that we had had tested to be tested by USADA’s lab, which also found the same thing. So pretty much every time it’s been tested, it’s shown that the product is contaminated with both clomiphene and Letrozole, the two substances (Jones tested positive for).”

On if it will reduce his sentence: “It should definitely lead to a significant reduction, that’s our position. The way the anti-doping rules, at least with the UFC program, are written, they mirror the World Anti-Doping Code to some extent. There are some differences but essentially in a case like this you can’t argue that you have no fault if you take a supplement or product that’s contaminated but you can argue that you’re not significantly at fault, which gives you the ability to argue for a reduced sanction. So the sanction range under the UFC rules would be between a warning at a minimum and of course the maximum is at a year.”

On how it’s similar to Yoel Romero’s case: “So Romero’s case similarly was a contaminated product case and the one difference between his case and Jon’s case is because of the substance involved in Yoel’s case, the maximum sanction was two years as opposed to the one year here. So the possible sanction range was between the same minimum of a warning but the maximum in his case was two years. USADA looked at it and we were able to come to an agreement that six months was the appropriate sanction in that case.”