Jon Jones flagged for potential USADA violation, out of UFC 200 main event; Brock Lesnar vs. Mark Hunt now headlines

By Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

Jon Jones (photo credit Mark J. Rebilas © USA Today Sports)

Jon Jones has been flagged for a potential USADA violation from an out of competition drug test on June 16, and he’s out of Saturday’s UFC 200 main event.

The shocking announcement came down on Wednesday night, with UFC President Dana White holding a surprise press conference to deal with the news. Brock Lesnar’s fight with Mark Hunt will now be the new main event on Saturday’s card.

White talked about how devastating this news is for Daniel Cormier, who misses out on the main event payday, and the UFC is looking to find him a new opponent. White didn’t have further information on the nature of Jones’ failure, and didn’t know what substance came up in the test. Though it blows up the main event and a fight they’ve promoted heavily, White says it’s how the USADA program is supposed to run.

“This is the way it should be,” White said. “We have the best program in all of sports, this is the way it should be.”

Penick’s Analysis: We’ll have much more reaction to this in the next day or two into Saturday’s event, but holy shit. I don’t even know how to react to this. Without knowing what the substance is, and given what we’ve seen from USADA so far, there’s every possibility of a false positive or an innocuous substance, and he still has the option of testing the B sample or fighting the result. Regardless, it’s a black mark on Jones’ career and his legacy no matter what comes back here by virtue of this fight being pulled from their planned biggest card ever. This is insanity. MMA is chaos.

[Photo (c) Mark J. Rebilas via USA Today Sports]

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1 Comment on Jon Jones flagged for potential USADA violation, out of UFC 200 main event; Brock Lesnar vs. Mark Hunt now headlines

  1. Horrible. Besides forever tarnishing his legacy, one that was already riddled with horrible judgment and moral decisions, he’s now done his best to demolish what should be one of the biggest events in MMA history.

    I can’t stand the guy, but he absolutely should end up going down as the best ever. At this point, it looks like we may just have a tragic “what if” to wonder about his wasted talent.

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