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Former UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones has confirmed one of the most infamous and hilarious stories from his first title reign around the time he was first stripped of the 205-pound strap.
It had previously been rumored that Jones once hid under a cage at Jackson Wink MMA Academy to avoid a drug test.
Deadspin had first reported on the story before Chael Sonnen amplified the tale during an appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Jones had never directly addressed the rumors, but during his latest exchange with middleweight champion Israel Adesanya, Jones seemed to confirm it was true.
Adesanya attempted to poke fun at Jones for hiding from the drug test, before Jones shared his side of the story.
“I napped under the cage in 2010 cuz I didn’t wanna waste gas going home so I stayed at the gym till evening training. Jonathan stayed under the cage to hide from USADA during a random drug test. This is facts,” Adesanya wrote on Twitter.
Jones then responded, saying he was hiding from the Nevada State Athletic Commission and not USADA.
“I was hiding from Nevada State Athletic Commission, not USADA and that was years ago,” Jones wrote. “I had just smoked a blunt and was afraid I would fail my test for weed. That’s the actual truth. Now everyone knows.”
Jones would later go on to test positive for turinabol, clomiphene, letrozole, and cocaine in the following years.
It looks like Chael Sonnen was right all along.
And if you never saw Sonnen’s retelling of the hilarious story, you can check it out below.
“USADA rolls in to Jackson’s gym to do a test on Jon Jones and there were only some coaches in there and Jon, there were like five people in there at the time. Where they parked, he can see them coming, so they know what to do with him. They hide him underneath the cage. Jon Jones hides under the cage. They say, ‘Jon, we don’t know where he is,’ and this is before we were enrolled in the program and he did not need to disclose his whereabouts. At the same time, if they show up and find you, you must test. If they can’t find you, you didn’t have to test back then. They wanted to get a warrant to go under that ring, under the theory that at some point in that 6-8 hour span, he would have had to pee. They wanted to go under forensically and collect that urine. That’s how upset they were that they had been had.”
