Dana White defends Jon Jones: ‘he didn’t do anything wrong’

Last night, we learned that a drug test had picked up a trace amount of the banned substance turinabol in Jon Jones’ system, and that the Nevada State Athletic Commission refused to license him for his UFC 232 fight with Alexander Gustafsson as a result. In an effort to ensure the fight happens, the UFC then moved the entire UFC 232 card from Las Vegas to Inglewood, California, as the California State Athletic Commission agreed to license Jones for the fight.

In the wake of this news, there’s been massive criticism of both Jon Jones and the UFC. UFC President Dana White has heard these criticisms.

He maintains that Jones is innocent.

“There’s no bigger (expletive)-up in the history of the UFC than Jon Jones,” White said (via MMAjunkie). “Let’s be honest, OK? When you have a guy that’s like Jon Jones, how many people do you really think are going to put their reputation, the UFC’s reputation, the California State Athletic Commission’s reputation, Jeff Novitzky’s reputation, USADA’s reputation – the list goes on and on – on the line for a guy who has (expletive) up as much as Jon Jones? Everybody here and everybody I just mentioned 100 percent believes Jon Jones is innocent.”

White also gave further explanation as to why the entire UFC 232 card was move after Jon Jones failed to get licensed in Nevada.

“You know I’m not afraid to cancel a fight,” White said. “I’m not going to move a whole (expletive) event to Los Angeles because we need Jon Jones to fight on Saturday because money, or we need … none of that (expletive). Jon Jones has trained for this fight. Gustafsson has trained for this fight. This fight needs to happen in this division. This fight should happen, and it’s going to happen because he didn’t do anything wrong.”

This article first appeared on BJPENN.COM on 12/23/2018.