Former UFC heavyweight champion Jon Jones has a long history with performance-enhancing drugs, raising doubts among fans about whether he truly deserves the GOAT title.
Despite his decorated career, many, including Demetrius Johnson and Daniel Cormier, have argued against his status as one of the greatest. Jones’ dominance inside the octagon is undeniable, but outside the cage, he has faced multiple DUI charges and positive drug tests.
Jones has only suffered one official loss in his career, against longtime rival Daniel Cormier, which was ruled a disqualification after Jones’ win was overturned due to a failed drug test. This rivalry and years of trash talk may explain Cormier’s refusal to recognize Jones as one of the all-time greats. Nevertheless, UFC veteran Matt Brown disagrees with Cormier’s stance.
“My two cents is realistically that should not negate him because the vast majority of guys he’s competing against are doing the same shit,” Brown said on The Fighter vs. The Writer. “The whole USADA, whatever drug testing they have now … the whole thing is a cat-and-mouse game. If you have the money, you can beat it. That’s pretty much in every sport. Lance Armstrong is definitely the greatest biker ever, and he never tested positive. Are you going to say he’s not? And he’s going against guys that were [cheating also].
“So I think [for Cormier] it’s a little bit personal. If you believe that USADA, the drug tests, that’s real and it’s actually stopping people, then you can say Jon Jones should not be the greatest or on Mount Rushmore or whatever because of that specific incident or multiple incidents for Jon Jones, I guess. But if you look at it realistically, the vast majority are doing it if they can afford to do it or they have the means to do it.”
With 15 years of UFC experience, Matt Brown believes many fighters, including Anderson Silva, who has also faced criticism, used banned substances to gain an edge, and that it shouldn’t solely define whether a fighter is considered great.
“There was a study somewhere, sometime, and they were talking to Olympic athletes, and they were like if I gave you this pill and you would win the gold medal, you knew for a fact you’d win the gold medal with this pill, but you also knew that you would die next year or next week or some shit like that, would you still take the pill?
“Everybody was like yeah,” Brown recalled. “It was something like 80 or 90 percent of them said ‘f*ck yeah, I’d take the pill.’
“That’s our whole life, our whole identity is fighting. If you can take something that’s going to maximize that, the vast majority of people will do it. There are ones that wouldn’t, like Jon Fitch never did, I never did. I think that there are exceptions to that rule. But the largest majority of people would do it, and until you’re in that situation, don’t say that you wouldn’t either.”
Brown doesn’t believe Jones’ past mistakes should overshadow his accomplishments, though he admits he understands why others see it differently.
“It’s not a question of whether he did or not,” Brown said. “We basically know he did something. I think that’s all it comes down to. It’s a personal view on how you look at all those things. Are you going to look at it realistically, like everybody’s doing it, and the majority of the guys he beat were probably doing shit, too? He just did it better. If you want to look at the facts of the positive drug test, I understand that side, too. I think there’s an argument both ways.”
While Jones was legitimately caught using performance-enhancing drugs, Brown views it as part of a larger issue that implicates many fighters.
“I think it’s just a personal opinion on whether you want to take that into account or not,” Brown argued. “In terms of accomplishments, you can’t say Jon Jones wasn’t the best ever. It’s a difficult argument to make anything else. But when you get into who did steroids and who didn’t, it’s basically all opinion at that point. If you just want to talk about Jon Jones, Anderson Silva [etc.], they tested positive. OK.
“That’s an easy argument, but you could talk about [Georges St-Pierre], there were a lot of opinions that he was on shit. You could take just about all of the guys in that GOAT argument, and it’s an opinion whether they were on shit or not.”
