Rashad Evans Questions Jon Jones’ Legacy: Was He Clean?
Jon Jones and Rashad Evans are both former UFC light heavyweight champions. Both men are also former teammates as well as former bitter rivals. The bad blood between the two has seemed to lessen over the past few years, but regardless of where they stand today, the two men will likely always have a connection.
With that being said, Evans felt ‘disappointment’ when he got wind of the news regarding Jones’ potential anti-doping violation just days prior to his scheduled UFC 200 main event with reigning title holder Daniel Cormier. The failed test also makes “Suga” question how clean Jones has been throughout his career:
“I just felt huge disappointment. As a fan first, and as somebody who is closely associated with Jon…I just hate to see somebody that has so much potential to do so many great things have this kind of situation happen to them. In my opinion, he’s probably one of the greatest fighters to ever put on gloves but now his legacy is going to be associated with the asterisk of ‘was he clean?’ and all the other things that he is known for outside of the cage.
“It’s very unfortunate. You look at Jon perform and what he’s been able to do – the body of work he’s been able to accomplish – and just look at the physical specimen of who Jon is, you just think that he doesn’t really need any kind of help with any kind of performance enhancing drugs. But this is a game of just trying to recover and making sure that you do what you need to do in order to train again. So maybe he got himself caught up trying to take something to help him recover.” Evans told ESPN.
In the aftermath of the shocking news, we have still yet to receive all of the details surrounding the situation including what exactly Jones tested positive for, but there has been some speculation from both Evans and former UFC title challenger Chael Sonnen implying that it may have been estrogen blockers that triggered the failed test for “Bones”.
Estrogen blockers are typically used when a man is cycling off of steroids, and Evans claims that Jones may have been trying to hide something:
“What he took, I have no idea. It’s still yet to be confirmed, but it does look like he was trying to hide something or he was trying to balance something out if that’s in fact what he did get caught for. “
How does this news effect Jones’ legacy?
