Jon Jones and USADA: When Cheaters Always Win

Sleep easy, everyone, for our long national nightmare has finally come to an end.

That’s right. In a world of uncertainty, one thing has become certain: Jon Jones will fight again. He will fight again and we couldn’t be more…

…excited? Is that the right word?

Confused and angry is probably more like it, especially when this feels like the continuance of a depressing trend rather than anything new or shocking.

The bumps in the road of Jon Jones’s career are beyond documented at this point. From doing drugs before a title fight to doing drugs after a title fight to doing drugs before another title fight to retrieving drugs after crashing his car before yet another title fight, there are few who have butted heads with athletic commissions and regulatory bodies and lived to tell the tale the way Jones has.

Granted, Jones can make excuses for his transgressions, saying his supplements were tainted or that he took advice from the wrong people, excuses that may be valid if he could ever actually prove them to be true, but the fact he keeps making them means he either doesn’t understand what he keeps doing wrong or, more likely, he understands but he doesn’t care because he knows his name and stature within the sport will get him a slap on the wrist and a hug from Uncle Dana every time.

The latter was seemingly given credence a few days ago with the results of the latest clash between Jones and USADA, UFC’s drug test partner.

Fans have, overall, not been too complimentary of USADA and the job they’ve done administering enhanced drug testing in MMA’s top promotion. That’s to be expected considering that, in their effort to maintain integrity and keep the sport clean, that usually means their job is to “Ruin big fights and events by pulling fighters for not being educated regarding the unregulated supplements they just ingested, assuming they did take drugs by accident and aren’t just trying to cheat the system, which really isn’t that hard to do if you have the financial resources and/or are impactful enough to UFC’s bottom line.”

Yeah, try saying all that when someone asks what you do for a living. Talk about your thankless jobs…

I don’t want to necessarily go along with everyone else and say that USADA has an agenda or anything like that but it gets hard not to believe the notion when you see fighters like Chad Mendes and Lyoto Machida get suspensions of 18 months to 2 years for first time offenses taking substances of little proven benefit that they didn’t know were banned while Jones, who is a repeat offender and should be smart and resourceful enough to know what he’s taking, only gets 15 months.

He was facing a 4 year ban after having just come back from a year suspension and only gets 15 months?

Really?

A small part of the reason for the reduction in time was due to all the drug tests Jones took during the timeframe of the failed test that he passed, which is like showing mercy to the murderer for all the people he didn’t kill, but the main reason, according to what was said during Jones’s arbitration, was that Jones has been providing “substantial assistance” to USADA.

That means Jones got less time because he was willing to tell USADA about other drug users. This is being referred to as the “Snitch Clause” by people much smarter than me.

So Jones is willing to throw others under the bus to save his own hide? That’s certainly not going to help his reputation any.

Still, you can’t argue with the results. Or at least Jon can’t because doing so will lead to time being added to his suspension.

Honestly, this news probably wouldn’t have been as big a deal if it wasn’t for the timing of it, coming out when there’s a UFC Payperview happening in New York City that is still in need of a main event.

And wouldn’t you know it? A 15 month suspension means Jones will be eligible to fight just in time for that event. Nope, that doesn’t sound suspicious at all…

Dana White has already said Jones won’t fight at UFC 230 or any remaining events this year. Whether that’s because Dana doesn’t think Jones will be ready or because he doesn’t want to validate the perception that USADA are nothing more than lapdogs who pay lip service to the idea of integrity in sport and will do the bidding of whoever pays to keep them operating, it won’t quell the outrage among only the most loyal of Jones’s fans.

The frustration regarding the whole situation is understandable, especially when a resolution to preventing situations like this happening in the future isn’t so clear. I guess it depends on whether we still want a clean sport and whether we’re willing to give USADA the benefit of the doubt and trust that what they’re doing will eventually lead to that, even if some of their methods and rationale seems questionable, like the way they dragged out Josh Barnett’s arbitration.

Then again, it’s not like having the athletic commissions be the sole arbiters of drug users has always worked either. Remember all the fun we used to have with the Nevada Athletic Commission, like when they banned Nick Diaz for 5 years for smoking weed or when they didn’t suspend Vitor Belfort for having elevated testosterone levels on the condition that his next fight take place in Nevada? Good times. I miss those guys.

Obviously, the frustrations with USADA go beyond Jones. We’ve seen a lot of fights fall apart because of drug test failures, although it can be argued that this is proof the program is working.

That’s a positive but it also comes with many negatives, like the way they flag all violators the same, resulting in many fighters having their names tarnished when they can prove they weren’t trying to cheat. They also classify drugs in ways that don’t always make logical sense and they make it difficult for fighters who don’t earn a lot of money in the first place to fight a violation, forcing many to accept a fate that shouldn’t have been imposed on them in the first place.

But, of course, that’s not a problem if you’re valuable to the UFC, right? Especially at a time when main event caliber talent is hard to come by.

To say definitively whether a reduced sentence was the right call for Jones comes down to determining whether someone should be allowed to compete sooner if the information provided to USADA helps them do their job better.

To that I can’t give an answer. It’s impossible to answer without knowing the information Jones gave to USADA, without knowing who he snitched on. Maybe we’ll find out in time, hopefully before Jones fails another drug test because, if he wasn’t performing his due diligence before, he probably doesn’t care enough to start now.

At this point, all I know is, if Daniel Cormier gets suspended for having elevated levels of Popeye’s Blackened Ranch dipping sauce in his system, we’ll know who the tipster was.

Evan Zivin has been writing for 411 MMA since May of 2013. Evan loves the sport, and likes to takes a lighthearted look at the world of MMA in his writing…usually.