Not for the first time in his career, it seems that Jon Jones camp are reaching for the tainted supplement excuse to explain how the star tested positive for steroids just 24 hours prior to his title rematch with Daniel Cormier at UFC 214.
As far as Jones’ agent Malki Kawa is concerned no other reason makes sense, particularly given that his fighter had already passed a number of drug tests leading up to the blockbuster showdown with Cormier last month.
“I can almost bet my life on it that this is another tainted supplement,” Kawa stated on The MMA Hour show.
“You’ve got to just take a look at the testing and how this thing went down. Jon passed two (random, out-of-competition) tests, July 6th and July 7th, … and in passing those two tests, they test for all of that stuff we failed for. So therefore, you’re talking about from the day he passed that test until the day before the fight, he would’ve had to have ingested something that would’ve caused this test to come out positive.
“The problem that we’re having with that is that he passes all of the random tests, but then the one test that we know about, the one that we for sure know about, is the one that we fail? So, something here is not sitting right. I’m assuming it’s the supplements we took. We just obviously got to get to work on it, see what was taken that month, that three-week period, that week of the fight, and figure it out from there.”
Kawa also talked about the state of disbelief that both Jones and his camp are currently experiencing at finding themselves in this situation again, just a year after the 30-year-old was removed from UFC 200 after failing another drug test.
“He’s devastated,” Kawa said. “He’s devastated and he’s hurt.
“It’s amazing that you can go from being at the very top of the mountain, everything that you can possibly do to gain the respect the admiration of everyone involved, fans, family members, the people in the UFC, just everyone, teammates, other fighters, and then to go from that, everything he’s been through to finally doing everything perfect — because last time he was being negligent, right? — this time he was being perfect and double-checking everything to [prevent] something like this from happening to him. It’s unbelievable, it’s unreal, and we’re all pretty much shocked. We’re all shocked and devastated.”
Kawa says it’ll be two weeks before they’ll get results from the B sample test, and he’s holding out hope that it may come back negative.
However, even if it doesn’t, Kawa is adamant that something doesn’t add up about Jones failed a test so close to the fight.
“I know Jon better than anybody, and I’m telling you, this man does not cheat. He has no reason to.
“I’m encouraging everyone to go out there and take a look at the tests he passed and the test he failed. It’s a three-week window the month of the fight. Jon has passed seven unannounced tests, and the one he’s going to fail is the one that’s announced? It’s weird to me, there’s a lot of things here that don’t add up, and to the UFC, it doesn’t add up.
“The UFC knows. They look at his tests on the 6th and the 7th, and he passed both of those, there’s nothing in his system. So for him to start doing steroids, especially the steroid they’re saying he took, he would’ve had to have been doing that steroid for awhile for it to actually do anything. He just took it to take it? I mean, to me, there’s a lot of issues with this. That’s why I just wish … they would change the way they released information, absolutely, because I think that if the B sample comes back negative, then this man just got crushed again for no reason.”
