COLUMN: Why is Dana White promoting Jon Jones so much?
Over the past few months, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) CEO Dana White has been going out of his way to promote one particular fighter in the UFC, Jon Jones. For those of you who don't know about Jon Jones, he is one of the greatest mixed martial artists of all time, and many suspect Jones will be retiring after UFC 309 in Madison Square Garden on Saturday.
Jones has accomplished great feats inside the UFC octagon, and he has brought many fans into the sport. I understand why the UFC would go out of its way to promote Jones for his swan song, but it's bizarre to see that White is the one leading the charge.
It is no secret that White and Jones have despised each other for the longest time. The CEO first publicly ridiculed Jones and his team back in 2012 when Jones pulled out of his bout with UFC Hall of Famer Chael Sonnen.
This is what White had to say about Jones' coach, Greg Jackson, who told Jones that fighting Sonnen would cost Jones his career: "I'm very confused by his whole f**king business plan. I don't give a sh*t what Greg Jackson thinks! Guy is a f**cking weirdo, man. Are you kidding me?"
White then continued to berate Jones' coach by saying, "(Jackson said) if (Jones) takes the fight with Chael Sonnen, it would be the biggest mistake of his entire career because he's not ready for that guy? Greg Jackson should never be interviewed by anybody ever again except for a psychiatrist!"
He didn't shame Jones directly, but it's obvious that the CEO was not amused by Jones' decision to decline to fight Sonnen. He expressed his true disdain for Jones during a press conference in 2020 when reporters asked why Jones would not receive extra pay.
"Being the greatest of all time doesn't mean you get 30 million dollars. (It's) being able to sell. Jon Jones has done a lot of things to himself. In one of his tweets, he was saying that I tarnished him. I tarnished you? You've done a very good job of tarnishing you. I haven't done that," White told the reporters.
White does not refer to one specific thing Jones did to sabotage his legacy. There are many situations White might be referring to, but there are two that stick out from the rest.
In 2015, Jones faced a hit-and-run felony charge after eyewitnesses testified seeing the athlete crash his car into a pregnant woman's vehicle, flee the scene and then come back to grab a large handful of cash. According to ESPN, police found a marijuana pipe with marijuana inside Jones' silver SUV.
Later in 2016, Jones tested positive for hydroxy-clomiphene and letrozole metabolite when he was scheduled to fight Daniel Cormier at UFC 200. After the UFC rescheduled the fight in 2017, Jones would then test positive for Turinabol. The first two drugs are anti-estrogens, which are used to counteract the effects of steroids in your body. The third drug, Turinabol, is an anabolic steroid that aids in muscle growth and recovery.
One year after White's remarks about the troubled athlete, Jones was arrested by Las Vegas police officers for domestic battery against his fiancée, Jessie Moses.
According to police reports, Jones came back to his fiancée and daughters agitated after a night out with friends, and Jones got into a physical altercation with Moses shortly after. After hotel security escorted Moses and the three children to the hotel security office, Jones' youngest child asked the security guard to call the police on their own father.
When White was asked to comment on Jones' arrest, he briefly said that it is not even shocking at this point and that this is something the UFC expects from Jones when he is in Las Vegas.
But if you listen to what White has had to say over the last few months, something is not adding up. Outside of claiming Jones to be the P4P best fighter after every press conference and interview, he now believes Jones should be undefeated in mixed martial arts.
"I mean, realistically, when you look at Jon's career, he's undefeated. He should be 27-0 right now," the CEO told reporters at the UFC 285 pre-fight press conference.
I don't know why White is suddenly going out of his way to praise Jones when the CEO has done nothing but trash Jones' legacy during the athlete's prime. But if you ask White if Jones is actually undefeated, deep down, he doesn't believe it.
"I had Dominick Reyes three to one going into the last round," White said. "My kids are terrorizing me that 'the fix is in' and 'how could this happen?'"
This was White's response to the judges' scorecards after UFC 247, Jones vs. Reyes. You can watch Jones and Reyes here, and by the end of the fight, you will ask how the judges robbed Reyes of that victory.
