With his status sizeably diminished following a failed drug test for cocaine metabolites and now the ongoing legal repercussions of a hit and run accident that saw him stripped of his UFC title, people are starting to talk about the behind the scenes version of Jon Jones a little more. Often called “fake,” for the cracks in his clean image (not the least of which included his DUI car crash back in 2012), that image now largely no longer exists.
John Dodson spoke about the changes that that has meant for Jones, during a recent media luncheon. MMAFighting was on the scene to hear what the flyweight title challenger had to say:
“He just wasn’t the perfect angel that everyone thought he was to be. You guys keep on thinking that he’s supposed to be like Hannah Montana, but really he was Miley Cyrus.”
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“Now he’s starting to realize like, ‘Hey maybe I need to start investing in my teammates’ lives, because if I do then they’ll start investing in mine.”
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“He had this safe zone and every one of them made sure he was this perfect angel. There’s no such thing as a perfect angel. I don’t think even think Mother Theresa was a saint her whole entire life. Oscar Wilde said that every sinner has a future and every saint has a past.”
The points about Jones surrounding himself with a problematic entourage were ones we’ve heard often as his career began to unravel. Especially at the time of his drug test failure, an expose in Deadspin talked about the continuous negative influences on Jones’ life. It’s interesting then to hear Dodson talk about Jones now reaching out to his teammates more and as he put it, “No longer is he gonna continuously wrap his life around people that he’s gonna have to constantly please all the time.” For the sake of fans looking for the former LHW champ to make a strong return to the UFC, that sounds like a positive sign.
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