Opinion: How to Ruin Your Own Special Night (and Your Career, Too)

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The frustrating and discouraging drama surrounding Jon Jones is now such an expected part of his prizefighting career that it’s hard to pick a place to even start discussing his potential doping test failure. It’s even harder to imagine when it might end, if ever.

When Jones has gotten drunk and/or high and gone drifting and/or drag racing in the past, he has been a danger to himself and ordinary citizens who have made the simple mistake of sharing the road with him. However, none of Jones’ previous indiscretions, even his decision to pull out of UFC 151 rather than fight Chael Sonnen on a week’s notice, have been as directly disastrous to his peers and his promoter. In a sentence that I never thought I would have to write about the athlete I believe to be the greatest fighter ever, thank heavens Brock Lesnar is here to hold it all together.

In a freakshow carnival sport where a complete cluster[expletive] seems to crop up monthly if not weekly, the stakes, timing and nature of Jones’ potential test failure, in addition to his attempted damage control, may just take the catastrophic cake. With an intact card, UFC 200 figured to do between one million and 1.5 million pay-per-view buys. While it’s beyond Jones' control how and when labs process test results, news of his potential failure from a sample collected on June 16 breaking 60 or so hours before fight time exacerbates the problem beyond calculation.

More than that, this is not a positive test for marijuana, cocaine or any other drug of recreation, which wouldn’t be tested for out of competition; and even with a growing current of MMA fans who decry the United States Anti-Doping Agency’s testing efforts scuttling the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s best-laid plans, a positive test for a performance-enhancing drug will always be treated more seriously than smoking pot or doing blow. Of course, the rotten cherry on the garbage sundae was Jones’ team calling a farcical Thursday morning press conference in an inept attempt to spin the story in their favor. It was yet another classic example of “Bones” being completely hapless outside the Octagon.

Two weeks ago, when talks of the UFC’s sale heated up, there were several media reports about the low morale in the Zuffa offices, especially among middle management and rank-and-file employees. Now, those same sorts of people are pulling out their hair, scrambling to reschedule media engagements, scheduling new media engagements to discuss this debacle, re-editing all photo and video promotions to reflect the new Lesnar-Mark Hunt main event and so on, all of it amidst three consecutive days of fights. Pity the poor sap who checked in this morning on the Strip, only to be asked to get out in a boom lift, scrape Jones’ face off of the side of the T-Mobile Arena and re-poster the damn thing.

UFC matchmaker Joe Silva's “What the [expletive] happened?” text to boss Lorenzo Fertitta upon landing in Vegas on Wednesday is already part of MMA lore. After 15 years of being regularly chided for his inability to pull off a good poker face in moments of crisis, UFC President Dana White looked enraged to the point of despondence at Wednesday night’s press conference to announce Jones being flagged by the USADA. By state law, the UFC now must offer ticket refunds; and even with Lesnar on the card, there’s no telling how hardcore fans or even disenfranchised casuals may react to the news, impacting the company’s bottom line. Sure, there are many people who don’t care about these particular impacts; if you work in fight promotion, you simply must prepare for these sorts of meltdowns, especially with Jones. But what of his fellow fighters? They’re casualties, too.

When considering PPV projections for UFC 200, Daniel Cormier would’ve likely pulled down four or five million dollars on top of his fight purse for a “Bones” rematch. Now, a 37-year-old Cormier finds himself in a nasty situation. Because of the foot injury that forced him to pull out of his scheduled rematch with Jones at UFC 197 in April, Cormier either needs to take on a short-notice opponent or end up having two consecutive training camps where he doesn’t actually fight and collect a purse or PPV points. If he does fight, there’s no telling how the drama of the situation may impact him. Cormier may be a consummate professional, but he could barely muster a brave face when discussing the heartbreaking news, looking absolutely crestfallen on Wednesday night.

On a weekend in which former Bellator MMA lightweight champion Will Brooks makes his UFC debut, we can’t overlook how “Ill Will” put himself on the map at 155 pounds: He stepped in on short notice for Eddie Alvarez against Michael Chandler and caught a sullen, withdrawn Chandler asleep at the wheel over 25 minutes. It is convenient to say that it’s a fighter’s job to always be ready for adverse circumstances, but this isn’t the Roman Colosseum. Losing to Jones, chasing the rematch and dealing with his antics have consumed Cormier for almost two years now; Jones is the archrival of his competitive life. It’s not your family that could miss out on millions of dollars; it’s Cormier’s.

Again, this doesn’t account for any lost PPV buys that could impact, say, Miesha Tate, or even the folks who decide to get a ticket refund and don’t lay eyes on the other fighters on the card. While the coming weeks may surprisingly exonerate him, the balance of probabilities suggests it’s more classic Jones recklessness.

As I write this, there are essentially three possibilities in explaining Jones’ failed test. One, he is innocent and the Salt Lake City lab that conducted the test accidentally contaminated his sample, which is rare but not unheard of; and while Jones did test positive for two banned substances, according to White’s interview with Colin Cowherd on Thursday afternoon, it’s not as though USADA has been without controversy and miscues over the last five years in and out of prizefighting. Two, Jones was unaware of the contents of supplements he was taking, demonstrating laziness and indifference to a now-crucial part of his profession. Three, Jones knowingly, willingly cheated and is lying. None of these scenarios represents a positive outcome.

In his silly press conference, Jones apologized despite adamant that he hadn’t cheated, remarking that he didn’t recognize and couldn’t even pronounce the substance(s) for which he tested positive. Why bother apologizing then? Even if Jones knowingly cheated, as we’ve seen in recent months as the USADA has ramped up its testing and busted multiple fighters, it’s a mortal lock he will use the “tainted supplement” excuse. That has become the go-to weapon for flagged fighters, as the simple fact is that a surprising amount of unadvertised additives and contaminants do get into the production chain of supplements.

With that said, ignorance is never an excuse, and Jones is one of the biggest and richest stars in MMA. Even undercard fighters in the UFC have taken to sending lists of supplements and ingredients to USADA reps to make sure they’re in compliance; a fighter with Jones’ bank account can actually have his supplements tested to make sure they’re kosher, which again demonstrates his wilful indifference to the rules. More than that, Jones claimed at his presser that he has taken “the same supplements” for his whole career. Yet late last year, he hooked up GAT Supplements as a sponsor -- a company that has already dealt with controversy over unadvertised additives in its products, as well as some of its popular products explicitly containing banned substances such as didehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), a substance for which Lyoto Machida tested positive in April.

Even if the USADA finishes testing Jones’ B sample and announces that it’s clean, it’s no great victory, as it indicates a complete gaffe on the USADA’s part, deals a legitimate blow to the agency’s reputation and calls into question the efficacy of the UFC’s entire new testing program. That’s the best scenario at this point.

This is a single radioactive example of the real issue that faces the UFC now, as the company puts on 40-50 events per year while trying to finalize a sale of the company which by all measures overvalues Zuffa’s actual assets. It’s fair to say that Jones has been unreliable, but he’s still the UFC’s third biggest star behind Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey, who were the primary factors in the promotion’s $600 million in revenue last year. McGregor and Rousey carried the promotion on their backs for 18 months, and both were exemplary “team players” for Zuffa. However, McGregor balked at more unpaid media obligations, and Rousey opted for Hollywood dreams and/or time away from the cage, meaning the UFC has had to get resourceful -- i.e. Lesnar -- in order to drum up interest and make money.

In a nutshell, the UFC business model seeks to employ nearly 600 fighters, never mind Zuffa employees, over 40-50 cards per year, despite never having more than a half dozen fighters who can do respectable PPV numbers and gates and only one or two who can create blockbuster revenue and legitimate mainstream media buzz. Now more than ever, one injury, one drug test, one negotiating standoff, can have immediate effects and create ripples of a massive magnitude. The UFC’s financial successes or failures are wildly unpredictable on an annual basis and, increasingly, a month-by-month basis.

UFC 200, for all its pomp and pageantry, is the new reference point for the savage volatility of the MMA market -- a reminder that this isn’t the NFL, where losing a star player for a couple of weeks or even an entire season may not be cause for concern. When Jones pulled out of UFC 151 instead of facing Sonnen four years ago, it was the clearest indication that the very nature of the UFC’s business had changed and that the actions of a single individual could topple the house, once made of brick but now increasingly made of cards. Ironically and bizarrely, even by MMA standards, Jones’ decision to not fight at UFC 151 set in motion the events that led us to this point. When Jones pulled out of UFC 151, the UFC sought to put Jones back in action immediately because, as mentioned, this company needs drawing cards. When Zuffa put him on UFC 152 three weeks later, it hastily announced he would rematch Machida. Soon after, Machida said he had never been contacted about the bout and needed more time to prepare. This is why Vitor Belfort was gifted a shot against Jones in Toronto; of course, this was prime testosterone-fueled Belfort.

Belfort will forever be the posterboy for the testosterone replacement therapy era of MMA, and his successes in 2012 and 2013 only served to amplify the voices of those who wanted the sport cleaned up. It wasn’t until September 2015 that Deadspin published Josh Gross’ expose of the fight’s shady circumstances. Three months earlier, the UFC had announced its USADA partnership. However, Gross and other journalists asking questions and collecting notes in hopes of taking the story to the masses was enough for the UFC to accelerate its course towards vigorous drug testing -- a chance to try to erase the TRT era and pre-empt responsible reporting on the fact that the UFC knowingly condoned and supported Belfort using testosterone heading into his fight with Jones.

It is a pernicious and questionable “What if?” However, knowing how the UFC 151 cancellation led to Jones-Belfort and knowing how Jones-Belfort put the fire to Zuffa’s feet even before the story became widely reported, it’s hard not to wonder if we’d be in this same position today if Jones had fought Sonnen at UFC 151. Then again, this is Jones we’re talking about; maybe he would have screwed up even bigger even sooner.

Now we head into what is supposed to be a landmark UFC event without McGregor and Rousey -- who figured to be the focal points of this event when Zuffa started hyping it late last year -- and now without the best fighter in the sport. So again, I say thank you to Lesnar, even if I say it with a mouthful of blood.