Jon Jones went before the California State Athletic Commission yesterday and attempted to convince them they had not knowingly taken the steroid Turinabol, which showed up in an out-of-competition test on the day prior to his UFC 214 title fight with Daniel Cormier on July 29th last year.
However, after listening to all the facts, CSAC voted 6-0 in favor of fining Jones $205,000, while also revoking his license, though the former light-heavyweight would be able to reapply for it in August.
“I don’t believe we should end Mr. Jones’ career, but I do believe he should sit out for a while,” CSAC Executive Director Andy Foster stated at one point during deliberations.
That’s not the end of the matter though as Jones now has to go before USADA, and given the surprisingly flimsy defense he gave yesterday, there’s no guarantees that they won’t suspend him for a lengthy period.
Jones and his team were unable to provide an explaination for how the banned steroid had got into his system, admitting that every supplement they’d tested came back clean.
When the fighter himself took to the stand he had little to offer except vehement claims of his innocence,
“Any person with common sense would know not to do steroids one week before their fight,” Jones said at one point. “All you guys in this room are really smart. You guys know this makes no sense.”
A key witness for Jones was Dr. Paul Scott of Korva Labs, who testified that the level of turinabol in his system would have been higher if he’d been intentionally taking the steroid.
However, this argument was soon weakened when it emerged that he’d only had four hours to generate his report into the matter and some of the information from which he’d drawn his findings into the amount of turinabol a person would use only came from reading some things on a bodybuilding website.
Scott’s testimony was later called into question by CSAC witness, Dr. Daniel Eichner of the Sports Medicine Research and Testing Laboratory, who rejected his findings and testified that it was impossible to conclusively determine whether Jones had taken a contaminated supplement.
Still, when he was on the stand, Jones never wavered in his claim that he wouldn’t knowingly use a performance enhancing drug.
“You can call me a little bit of a party-boy or a knucklehead, but a cheater is something I’ll never say that I am, because that’s not who I am,” Jones said at one point.
Despite a complete lack of scientific evidence, Jones did somehow manage to convince CSAC’s Foster that he was telling the truth.
“I have a personal and professional view,” Foster said. “My personal view is, I believe him. I view it from common sense. This makes no sense for him to take this drug on the test that he knows that is coming. Having said that, here we are.”
Whether USADA will be so forgiving when Jones go before them later this year remains to be seen.
