Anthony Smith expects Jon Jones’ issues outside the cage to continue

Anthony Smith believes his former opponent, UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones, will continue to find trouble outside the cage until he decides to make some real changes.

Smith shared his take on Jones’ ongoing personal issues, which most recently manifested in the form of a DWI arrest, during a recent interview with MMA Fighting.

The former light heavyweight title challenger weighed in on Jones’ issues by drawing on his own previous brushes with the law.

“I’ve done the things that Jon Jones has done” Smith said. “I’ve been in a drinking and driving accident when I was the driver. I’ve gotten multiple DUIs. I’ve been in jail before. None of that stuff changed until I was ready to change. That was it. I don’t hide it. Jon is trying to hide from everything.

“Until you can be a man with your head held high and say, ‘You know what? I f*cked up and I’m done being a f*ck-up,’ nothing is going to change,” Smith continued. “You see the fans saying, ‘The UFC needs to do this. The UFC needs to do that.’ It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what they do. Until he’s ready to change himself and it’s cliché, it’s every self-help book you’ve ever read your whole life, but it’s the truth. I didn’t change until I was ready to change.

“We all know how this story’s going to go. He’s going to do his little rehab thing. He’s going to come out and do a 45-minute interview. He’s going to apologize. He’s going talk about how he’s going to change. He’s going to say he appreciates everybody. And then we’re not going to hear from him for a little while.Then he’s going to fight, he’s going to win and he’s going to thank everyone for sticking with him the entire time, and then a year later, we’ll be starting over again.”

At this stage, Anthony Smith isn’t sure what it will take to convince Jon Jones he needs to make some changes.

“I know what mine was and I know what it took for me to change but it’s not losing his title,” Smith said. “It’s not financial, cause he’s already lost a sh*t ton of money. It’s not his public perception cause he’s already trashed that a couple times. I don’t know. There’s a lot of stuff going on and there’s a lot of demons he’s got to deal with. At this point, nothing Jon Jones does would ever surprise me. It’s crazy.”

Despite his critique of Jones, Smith is adamant that he’s not rooting against the champ.

“It doesn’t matter what Jon Jones says,” he said. “It matters what Jon Jones does. What he says and what his actions are two completely different things. I don’t give a sh*t what he says — I care about what he does — and I’m not rooting against Jon Jones.”

What do you think of these comments from Anthony Smith?

This article first appeared on BJPENN.com on 4/6/2020.