Is there no way to gauge the career or talent of a clean, honest Jon Jones?

Garnet_StrongerThanYou

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Jon Jones is seen by many as the GOAT.

With a record like his, he would be the goat if it wasn’t for the following:

1. numerous PED busts
2. Eye gouging and blatant fouls inside the ring
3. Constant in and out of jail on stupid petty crimes and some serious ones.


If he was a decent guy who followed the rules:

What would he look like?

Still undefeated?

Losses to DC and Alexander Gustafson?

We will never know.
 
Light Heavyweight goat, take out a few wins for cheating, still has it by a mile.
 
Well that's why roiding puts a huge asterisk next to your whole career because we will never know how long he took them for, just that he is a multiple offender. If you ask me he would had at least 3 or 4 losses on his record already if he had a clean career. Nothing too special about that.
 
Jon Jones is seen by many as the GOAT.

With a record like his, he would be the goat if it wasn’t for the following:

1. numerous PED busts
2. Eye gouging and blatant fouls inside the ring
3. Constant in and out of jail on stupid petty crimes and some serious ones.


If he was a decent guy who followed the rules:

What would he look like?

Still undefeated?

Losses to DC and Alexander Gustafson?

We will never know.

he would have been a flash in the pan


Nothing more
 
Jon Jones is seen by many as the GOAT.

With a record like his, he would be the goat if it wasn’t for the following:

1. numerous PED busts
2. Eye gouging and blatant fouls inside the ring
3. Constant in and out of jail on stupid petty crimes and some serious ones.


If he was a decent guy who followed the rules:

What would he look like?

Still undefeated?

Losses to DC and Alexander Gustafson?

We will never know.
probably gets knocked out by bumstufson in the first fight
 
It's not impossible to make educated guesses about how his fights would have gone down on an even playing field.
I speculate he would be at least a top fifteen LHW. It's hard to believe the Gustafsson fight would have gone to a decision if he had been clean, or that he could have fought through Belfort's armbar.
The best indication of how his fight(s) with Cormier would have gone is Jones' own decision to take the risk of juicing for the rematch, after having already popped leading up to a fight with the same opponent--obviously he preferred to take his chances with USADA than with Cormier.
I also look at the effect Jones' roided head kick had on Cormier, and the effect Evans' head kick had on Jones and ask myself, What if they had been delivered under the same conditions?
However, while it was a lackluster affair, it's widely believe he beat Ovince St.-Preux clean. OSP is a ranked opponent and Jones wasn't able to poke his eyes.
Anthony Smith looked like crap against Jones, who had been given license to "pulse." Because it was such a complete domination, I don't see Jones losing that fight even without chemicals, as long as Smith fought the same way.
We really can't know how Jones' supplementation changed for the Santos and Reyes fights. If he had any chemical support at all, it's a cinch that they would have finished clean Jones.
 
People forget how good prime Jones was, he was smashing everyone. It’s like the people picking Khabib as GOAT really don’t understand that he would also look Human if he fought elite competition for long enough.

No one will ever know how many fights Jones was juicing for. But also think about how much better he could have been if he stayed off the booze and coke? He’s obviously a hard worker but he abused his body and what it would have been like will forever be unknown.
 
Almost no fighter in the UFC is clean.

Plenty of fighters eyepoke. The UFC needs gloves that keep the fingers from extending easily.

What a fighter does outside the cage really has nothing to do with being the greatest of all time inside the cage.
 
He admitted he hid under the cage to hide from a drug test (although claims it was for weed). AND he popped. With his drug and unethical history, seems overwhelmingly likely he cheated. Still a great fighter obviously. Not sure if it's his age or it's just that he's clean now, but looks somewhat average now, probably what more of his career would have looked like, a lot like he did in that Reyes fight. Great fighter, but not dominant. Also something GSP talked about that is not talked about with doping are the intangibles. Not just a boost in strength and stamina, but also confidence, aggression, reaction time etc. All of which Jones had a lot of.
 
Perhaps without the pads he would never have had the belief to even compete. Perhaps long time ago in the past he wasn't competitive and on the verge of quitting. Perhaps way back in the high school wrestling he was getting tooled then found his edge in the bottle. Or maybe he was destroying everybody his entire life and still felt the need to cheat. Ha.
 
Jon Jones is seen by many as the GOAT.

With a record like his, he would be the goat if it wasn’t for the following:

1. numerous PED busts
2. Eye gouging and blatant fouls inside the ring
3. Constant in and out of jail on stupid petty crimes and some serious ones.


If he was a decent guy who followed the rules:

What would he look like?

Still undefeated?

Losses to DC and Alexander Gustafson?

We will never know.

In high competition, people will do whatever gives them an edge to win. Not everyone gets caught though. You catch the ones that will be the perfect bad example.
 
Jon Jones is seen by many as the GOAT.

With a record like his, he would be the goat if it wasn’t for the following:

1. numerous PED busts
2. Eye gouging and blatant fouls inside the ring
3. Constant in and out of jail on stupid petty crimes and some serious ones.


If he was a decent guy who followed the rules:

What would he look like?

Still undefeated?

Losses to DC and Alexander Gustafson?

We will never know.
1. It's easier to just ignore PED issues when ranking GOATs. Just too messy and elite sports is inseparable from doping.
2. If the ref's aren't calling it, that sucks but it is what it is. Cheating intelligently is something most GOATs do (remember GSP snapping Bisping's jock strap cuz he grabbed it so hard?)
3. IF you don't like it fine, but it doesn't have anything to do with his actual resume
 
Not really, no.

He and Lance Armstrong are really, really fucking good.

And there is no way to gauge exactly how good.

Which is the entire point. Instead of asking the wrong question “how many fights/races could/would they have won without PEDs”, we must insist on the statement “we have no idea how good the cheaters would have been.” A subtle but important distinction.
 
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Call me naïve, but I think Jone's record would be the same, drugs or not. Except for the NC's, they would be wins.
 
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