Longtime MMA official and current Bellator commentator, John McCarthy, believes Jon Jones when he says he didn’t intentionally ingest performance-enhancing drugs. McCarthy joins California Athletic State Commission Executive Officer, Andy Foster, as those who have publicly stated they believe Jones’ side of the story.
Shortly after Jones’ CSAC hearing, Foster clarified his reasons for believing Jones:
“He passed all the tests that were surprise tests, the out-of-competition tests, but then he fails the one he knows is coming? That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. And with a drug that is easily detectable. There’s a lot of things that doesn’t make any sense about this. As you know, I can’t deal with that. I can only deal with the facts that are in front of me.”
John McCarthy on Jon Jones
McCarthy appeared on MMA Junkie radio recently and voiced his own concerns about Jon Jones’ case.
“When he took the lie-detector test, I believe that Jon didn’t knowingly take a pill or take a shot or injection for that steroid, but I do believe he’s taking things or allowing himself to ingest things that, for whatever reason, that sometimes contain these things, because he’s taking them from places that there is no quality assurance.”
In December, Jones took and passed a polygraph test regarding his alleged PED-use.
Evidence Points to a Tainted Supplement
At Jones’ recent CSAC hearing, both his team and the CSAC Executive Officer agreed the levels of Turinabol found in Jones’ system combined with dates which he passed other tests are not consistent with what you would expect to find in an athlete who is purposely doping.
“It doesn’t make sense for Jon Jones to dope at the time that he doped,” CSAC’s Andy Foster stated. “I’m saying however it got in his system, that wouldn’t have been the right time.”
Although McCarthy believes Jones didn’t knowingly ingest banned-substances, he still believes it is on the athlete to know what is going into their body.
“When you’re an athlete making the amount of money that Jon is making, you can’t go to the AM-PM and buy something that’s in pill form and put that in your mouth without going, ‘What the (expletive) are you doing?”
McCarthy continued to say Jones is the greatest MMA fighter of all time but has to be more personally responsible.
“I say he’s the greatest MMA fighter I’ve ever seen. But this is where the problem comes forward. I don’t personally believe Jon took some type of steroid before fighting Daniel Cormier. … But Jon is personally responsible as a professional athlete under contract with the UFC.”
