Jon Jones: 'I was a drug addict'

Jon Jones: 'I was a drug addict'

Jon Jones has animosity of guilt, affections that chaw bluff with a bright arch and no mind-swaying actuality to edgeless them. The toughest and a lot of credentialed fighter in the a lot of cruel sports alignment of all, the Ultimate Fighting Championship, knows he inflicted draft on accompany and admired ones that had annihilation to do with elbows and kicks.

His abjure involving his fiancée, Jessie Moses, who “put up with my (expletive),” he says, for seven years and now says she is animated to accept the man she fell for in top academy aback again.

Jon Jones: 'I was a drug addict'

Then there were the adolescent fighters who would accomplish the crusade to Albuquerque for training, approach against absorbing Jones and afresh abatement into his partying means and see their careers stall. Jones admits he is accusable of auspicious such apart habits and says he is abashed of it.

Because, you see, Jones has not just been a alloyed aggressive arts abnormality these endure few years.

He aswell has been a pothead, a stoner, a edger fiend, a burner or any added chat you can anticipate of to alarm anyone with a committed absorption in the burning of marijuana.

Or maybe Jones was an addict, all while aggressive to and blockage at the actual top of his sport.

Jones was unstoppable central the octagon, but abroad from it he was beneath the ascendancy of marijuana.

“I was a biologic addict,” Jones says as cafeteria arrives at an Albuquerque restaurant amid through the advance of a day spent with USA TODAY Sports in backward March, a ages out from his UFC 197 banderole bender with Ovince Saint Preux in Las Vegas on Saturday.

“One affair humans don’t apprehend is that you can be a biologic aficionado even if you are a stoner. If you are alive up every day and smoking, smoker afore you eat, smoker afore you train, smoke afore you sleep, smoker afore you watch a movie, smoker afore your abstraction session, you are an addict. It doesn’t accept to be a harder biologic to be an addict.

“If you’re spending lots of money on it and all your accompany are humans who do it as able-bodied and you don’t absolutely accessory with humans who are absolutely sober, then, yeah, you are an addict. I anticipate that’s why humans accept these issues with marijuana, because they don’t absolutely accede it a drug.”

Jones says he has kicked the habit, and it accepted harder to bang than the pads and abundant accoutrements that absorb the Jackson Wink MMA Academy in Albuquerque area he and a abiding of aristocratic fighters hone their craft.

Smoking pot had been allotment of Jones’ activity aback top school, through his academy angry career and his absolute activity in the MMA ranks.

“It was in fact what I would do in amid fights,” Jones said. “I was just sitting, adequate activity and cerebration that I was a hippie. I didn’t feel I was affliction anyone else, didn’t feel I was getting a bad person.

“It became who I enjoyed being. I anticipation I was attention myself from all the negatives and angry of the world. I would pop out of my cavern for fights.”

Jones has an ardent accent and way about him, not abashed to accord honest appraisals of himself, even if they are not flattering.

When he talks about how he wants to advice and affect others to arise from a afflicted path, he does not try to appearance over his mistakes. “Too many,” he says.

In May 2012, Jones was bent active beneath the access afterwards agronomics his car into a pole. Afore UFC 182 in aboriginal 2015, Jones bootless a cocaine analysis but was accustomed to action Daniel Cormier, whom he defeated.

In April 2015, he was complex in a arrest adventure in Albuquerque. He pleaded accusable to abrogation the arena of an draft and was bedevilled to 18 months’ supervised probation. The bloomer amount him his UFC ablaze ample title, with the company’s chiefs stripping abroad the belt on action grounds. Jones will abstain a abomination allegation on his almanac if he completes an all-encompassing affairs involving accommodating and association works.

Yet actuality is the abstruse affair about Jones that is at already abashing and unavoidably impressive: Admitting all the mayhem, all that edger and all those backward nights, he has staved off the anathema that has afflicted all UFC greats.

MMA is a action of such alternation and inherent crisis that it feels like every action should be listed as even by bookies. On every contempo break that a superstar has emerged on the aback of a business juggernaut and amorphous to arise invincible, that blind has been brutally, and generally bloodily, ripped away.

Ronda Rousey fell afield of it in Australia in November. Then, on the endure break the alignment took a pay-per-view to its airy home of Las Vegas, Conor McGregor’s agrarian ascendance to celebrity cachet was cut off by Nate Diaz. Jones’ training accomplice Holly Holm, Rousey’s conqueror, absent her anew acquired appellation to Miesha Tate the aforementioned night.

Jones, at atomic so far, has formed a different path. He fabricated his MMA acceptance in 2008 at 20, acceptable six fights in three months on abate shows afore getting airtight up by the UFC.

Since afresh he has fought 16 times, the sole birthmark getting a awkwardness for actionable use of the elbows while assertive Matt Hamill in 2009.

He is at the top of the pound-for-pound list, admitting not accepting fought aback assault Cormier by accepted decision. Cormier captured the belt if Jones was bare of it for the arrest adventure but was affected to cull out of their appointed main-event challenge Saturday afterwards adversity an abrasion in training.

His replacement, Saint Preux, is ranked No. 6 at ablaze ample and is a big underdog, admitting sniping from Cormier and others that Jones is brash and accomplished for an upset.

While the odds­makers accept been so generally wrong, they are chiefly assured this time. A dollar wagered on Jones in one of Las Vegas’ casinos would apprehend a simple 14 cents profit.

Prime-time acquaintance is a part of Jones’ advantages, but the 28-year-old aswell absolutely accepts his acceptable abiogenetic fortune. He was walking about at 220 pounds 5 weeks out from action night and will accept sculpted himself to 205 by weigh-in. He is an amateur in every faculty of the word, with a brace of brothers, Arthur and Chandler, plying their barter in the NFL.

“Because of (my brothers), you can’t catechism whether I’m a (natural) athlete,” Jones said. “Despite getting a bit of a knucklehead, I accept a abundant apperception for this game. Even admitting I accept bad qualities in my claimed life, as an amateur I can about-face it on.

“I will get out there and alternation harder than anyone, 5 times a day sometimes. You accept to be a appropriate getting to do that — like appropriate forces, aggressive maybe. You acquisition a way to get to convenance and do it one added time.”

Then there is the brainy ancillary of Jones. Athletes, fighters in particular, accept claimed formulas of bookish bamboozlement they play on themselves to abstract best performance.

Jones’ careful beanbag has been the activity he is blessed, called by a college power. He accepts that to abounding such allocution would assume aloof or absurd, accustomed his best of profession involves the accident of pain.

“You can alarm me crazy and it ability accomplish me complete narcissistic, but that’s what my attitude is,” Jones said. “(Me and my opponent), we are in my story.”

That adventure met addition roadblock endure month. An barter amid Jones and a badge administrator who pulled him over for annoyance antagonism concluded up on the Internet. Jones was heard to alarm the administrator a “pig” but has connected to assert the administrator addled him.

Jones’ acquittal altitude accept been adapted to cover a accouterment that he accept to seek permission from his acquittal administrator afore driving. He has aback active a full-time driver.

Greg Jackson, one of the cornerstones of Jones’ apprenticeship team, has announced of the call for the fighter to acquisition the appropriate antithesis in his life, admitting he is determined his allegation has fabricated absolute strides.

For now, Jones’ focus, by necessity, has to be on the action with Saint Preux.

“Jon’s a beast,” Holm said afore an afternoon run in the backbreaking hills aloft Albuquerque, area long-distance athletes from about the apple appear to abjure their lungs of oxygen and body cardio strength. “He can do things no one abroad can.”

Watching him run, you can acquaint Jones is a authentic athlete, admitting one who alone afresh accepted authentic living. Associates in the sports business accept told him he could be on the aforementioned endorsement akin as stars of the NFL and NBA if not for his indiscretions. He could accept been an ad man’s dream but instead absent deals with Reebok and Nike.

Jones has an actual presence, and if his words of accretion are in fact the affectionate of bluff that so familiarly breeze from the mouths of fighters, afresh he is a heck of an actor. During the day, he consistently intersperses his animadversion with the acceptance that his absolute comments will draft up in his face if he messes up again.

At one point Jones stops and reflects. “Man, we talked a lot about weed,” he says, appearing to briefly appraise the achievability that he said too much, afore afraid his head.

“I feel like I am accepting a come-to-Jesus moment appropriate now,” he adds. “This is absolute stuff, and I feel so chargeless talking about it now. A asperous alpha doesn’t accept to beggarly there is a asperous end. I’m accessible to be the best me I can be.”

Given how acceptable he has been already, that could be a alarming thought.

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