Jon Jones feels it will be ‘virtually impossible’ to prove innocence ahead of UFC 232

Late last week, a Jon Jones drug test turned up trace amounts of the banned substance turinabol — the same substance he was flagged and suspended for after UFC 214 in 2017. The amount of turinabol detected on this test was so small, however, that the United States Anti-Doping Agency was not prepared to label it a violation.

While the UFC had to move Jon Jones’ UFC 232 fight with Alexander Gustafsson from Las Vegas to Los Angeles as a result of this test anomaly, the fight will go ahead as planned this Saturday. That being said, many fans have lingering doubts surrounding the former champ’s innocence.

Jon Jones has heard these doubts, but feels there’s really no way to prove his innocence — at least not before his UFC 232 fight with Gustafsson.

“I think my trying to prove any type of innocence is going to be virtually impossible before the fight, because of the controversial image I have,” Jones told ESPN on Wednesday. “People are kind of set in what they’re going to believe. I can’t win over many minds before the fight.”

The leading theory with respect to the trace amounts of turinabol detected by this recent drug test is that it is a residual amount still left over from Jones’ previous ingestion of the substance. It’s an undeniably complicated issue, but at the end of the day Jon Jones is confident he did nothing wrong.

“Even the scientists that found it, don’t know much about it,” Jones said. “I’m hearing reports this s— could live in my system for seven years. I’ve learned to say, ‘You know what Jon? You know in your heart you did nothing wrong.’ If I took another polygraph test and answered the question, ‘Have you ever knowingly put this in your system?’ I could confidently say, ‘No, I never knowingly put this in my system.’ And it would be a true statement.

“I just have to surrender to people’s opinions,” he added. “I gotta surrender to the ignorance our sport is surrounded by. I gotta surrender to the fact most people will never pick up a book and do homework for themselves. I gotta surrender to it all and say, ‘Listen Jon, you’ve had a controversial career. You’re fun for people to pick at. You’re fun for people to talk about. If you are part of anything that’s not positive, it’s going to be huge news.’

“I have to be 100 percent confident in knowing I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Where do you stand on this Jon Jones situation?

This article first appeared on BJPENN.COM on 12/27/2018.