JRE MMA Show #53 with Jeff Novitzky

... four, three, two, one. Boom. Got a little thing going on here now, a little circle. Hello, Jeff. Merry Christmas.

What's up, Joe? You too.

How you living? (laughs)

(laughs) Not been the easiest week in, in my life or my career is last week, but hanging in there.

To make this a standalone so that people don't have to go r- figuring this out on their own, and I- I'm sure many, many fans that are tuning in already know the, the gist of the details, let's lay this out from the beginning. Jon Jones' initial failed test.

Yeah, so that was July of 2017. He tested positive for approximately 20, anywhere from 20 to 60 picograms of a long-term metabolite known as the M3 metabolite of a substance called dihydrocholormethyltestosterone, DH-CMT, also known as oral Turinabol.

And this was over a year ago. Um, what was determined to be the source of this stuff?

Never determined what the source was.

Hmm.

So Jon went through a full arbitration hearing, um, was never able to determine where it came from. Tested all the supplements he was using, you know, went through many, uh, interviews with USADA, had a full-on arbitration hearing. Uh, the source was never determined where it came from.

Why was his suspension so low or so short if it wasn't determined?

Well, I mean ... (laughs) So, I mean, there's many factors that, that go into what that suspension was. I w- I would argue in the tota- totality of the evidence that was presented in that arbitration that it, that it wasn't a short suspension, um, because really one key thing came out at arbitration. So Jon went to arbitration before an individual by the name of Richard McLaren. Richard McLaren has an arbitration group up in Canada, and McLaren is probably worldwide known as one of the most credible guys in anti-doping. I know you had the, the Icarus producer, director on.

Mm-hmm.

The McLaren report was the report that came from all that. He basically investigated the Russian state being involved in doping in the Sochi games and put out actually a series of reports on it detailing that up to 1,000 Russian athletes, um, you know, were breaking the rules and the Russian laboratory was helping them get around it. So-

Right.

... he's a very, very respected guy. He's independent of, obviously, the UFC. He's independent of USADA. Um, he acts on his own.

And his determination was?

His determination, um, and I'll read you kind of what he said.

Okay.

He said, "I find that all evidence available to me leads me to conclude that the violation was not intended nor could it have e- enhanced the athlete's performance." So A, non-intentional, so non-intentional ingestion. I mean, there's no argument that it was in his system, but he found the evidence to show non-intentional use, and then he went further saying that based on the numbers of what he saw in the evidence, there was not even a performance-enhancing benefit afforded to Jon for having this long-term metabolite in his system. And I think that's significant when you talk about, hey, 15 months, was that ... That's, you know, kinda light being that this is his second time through. I would argue that if there was an argument, that maybe it's on the higher end. And certainly, you know, we'll talk about the California commission. Andy Foster took that position, uh, in Jon's recent California hearing. He was a little bit critical of USADA. Um, he thought, you know, he's intimately familiar with this evidence, both in the previous case and this occurrence, that, and he also saw that there was no evidence that an independent arbitrator, you know, made this, uh, statement and decision of Jon intentionally cheating. Um, so if anything, you know, I'd say that potentially there could be an argument that, that it was, you know, on the higher end versus the lower end.