Jon Jones took a major step toward a return to MMA on Tuesday, when he received a conditional clearance from the California State Athletic Commission. The former light heavyweight champion hasn’t fought since July 2017, when a failed drug test led to a lengthy suspension and the nullification of his victory over Daniel Cormier at UFC 214.
In September, the U.S. Anti-doping Agency announced that an arbitrator had reduced a potential four-year suspension for Jones to 15 months, with a retroactive element that would have allowed him to compete again as soon as late October. Given that the UFC event took place in Anaheim, Calif., the 31-year-old MMA star was still required to attend a hearing with that state’s commission, which gave him the go-ahead pending an agreement on a community service plan.
Jones is scheduled to take on Alexander Gustafsson in a long-awaited rematch at UFC 232 on Dec. 29. That fight will take place in Las Vegas and thus be governed by the Nevada State Athletic Commission, but Jones had to first pay a $205,000 fine and get clearance from the CSAC.
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The state body was not expected to hold anything up, but at the hearing, per multiple reports, Jones got an unexpected request from one of the commissioners that he enroll for a period of at least several months in a drug-testing program administered by the Voluntary Anti-Doping Association (VADA).
“I know you’ve said that you’re happy USADA has established that you didn’t do this intentionally in your last test, and all of that, but you and I both know that there is a large number of people who still have some doubts, right?” Commissioner Martha Shen-Urquidez told Jones (via MMA Fighting).
The failed test in 2017 was the second of Jones’s career for a banned substance, with the first coming on the eve of a scheduled showdown with Cormier at UFC 200 in July 2016. Both were ruled by USADA, which runs the UFC’s drug-testing program, as unintentional.
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Jones also was announced as having tested positive for a metabolite of cocaine before UFC 182 on Jan. 3, 2015, but his victory there over Cormier was allowed to stand. Cormier eventually won the light heavyweight crown that was stripped from Jones following the latter’s 2015 arrest for a hit-and-run accident that injured a pregnant woman, but Cormier has since added the UFC’s heavyweight belt, and the company is expected to take back his light heavyweight title and award it to the winner of Jones-Gustafsson 2.
“I, for one, would like to put the doubts to sleep and to put them away once and for all, and for people to believe you — that you are that talented and that you are the greatest, and that you can win a fight just clean and that this is Jon Jones,” Shen-Urquidez said to him at the hearing, “and to put those doubts away once and for all.”
Jones agreed “in principle” to the suggestion to enroll in a VADA program, but said through his attorney, Howard Jacobs, that he would have to study its details. “We need to see what exactly it is that we’re agreeing to, as far as what VADA is testing for, when they test, what their restrictions are,” Jacobs said.
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Regarded by some as the most talented fighter in MMA history, Jones (22-1) hasn’t lost a fight since 2009. In their first matchup, at UFC 165 in 2013, Gustafsson (18-4) gave Jones one of the toughest battles of his career.
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