Matt Brown explains why he doesn’t eliminate Jon Jones from GOAT conversation despite positive drug tests

[Ghostoftheville]

Fedor, GSP, and Mighty Mouse

All great fighters and I put them in the GOAT conversation as well. But as a reminder to what I quoted when asking you to lists your goats:

nonoob said:
"PED use, busted time after time, cowarding out & scrapping an entire Card from ducking short notice Chael, then his Entire HW fiasco aren't ANY traits of a GOAT."

Fedor ducked UFC testing and the heavyweight roster multiple times. Padded his record fighting middleweights, pro wrestlers and freak show fights over top competition, Chose Fábio Maldonado for his first retirement fight and his home promotion had the judges call the fight in his favor when nobody, even his biggest supporters thought he won. Tried to force Dan Henderson in a catchweight bout knowing it could impact how the naturally smaller man would perform with an extra 20+ pounds on him. Retired again after choosing handpicked Timothy Johnson.

GSP stopped by strikes to a 5'6 lightweight that had never stopped anybody before him with strikes. Turned into a point fighter after avenging that loss. Ran from the sport after nearly losing to Johny Hendricks and the testing that he claimed he wanted for 4 years until he had the opportunity to fight the weakest MW champ since Dave Menne. Immediately forfeited the title after the next contender was announced.

Demetrious Johnson the most dominant champ of his division, refused to fight the best fighter available that was openly calling him out and claiming he wanted to kill Johnson's whole division. Instead chose to focus on fighting Ray Borg so he could break the record of another GOAT candidate.

Every fighter of note is going to have something you knock them down a peg or two about.

 

[Cartiac]

USADA gave Jones a reduced suspension and their official statement said this was due to the “substantial assistance” he offered. The USADA “substantial assistance” rule states allows USADA to suspend a fighter’s doping sentence if the fighter provides info which “results in a criminal or disciplinary body discovering or bringing forward a criminal offense or the breach of professional rules committed by another person."
So sure, it could’ve been coaches or trainers or something that he ratted on and not fighters, but that doesn’t really change the substance of what I said. If it’s not personnel like that, it would have to be steroid dealers and distributors—and how would an angel like Jon Jones have that kind of info?
Bottom line is that he’s a cheat who got a reduced sentence by ratting on other people who cheat.

Are you seriously asking what I source I have that they caught him with steroids in his system? How about the multitude of tests which showed he had steroids in his system?

USADA has never found that their means of testing were invalid. They made a change eventually to not flag small levels of steroids as a Fail, which is hilarious. “I guess it’s ok, you only have a little bit of a totally banned, performance-enhancing substance in your system”
Dude, PEDs are a prohibited substance. PCT drugs are prohibited substances. If a fighter has a PED in their system, they are breaking the rules. It’s silly to ignore trace amounts of steroid metabolites as one can’t rule out that a fighter was cycling. And regardless, the criteria I just described was the criteria at the time.

USADA has no solid scientific evidence that turinabol “pulses,” and are trying to extrapolate that based on some shared characteristics with clomiphene, which does have some evidence of pulsing—albeit no evidence of it pulsing anywhere near as long as Jones is said to have been pulsing—and yet, Jones has tested positive for clomiphene and never pulsed for it.

Come on now. You’re too old to believe in fairy tales.
Jon Jones has been caught with steroids in his system multiple times because he ingested steroids multiple times.

Isn't this a bunch of lazy talk, just stating what you think? I appreciate the response, but you shifted to defending the semantics of each point rather than defending how you know Jon Jones is a cheater in comparison to others which is what I challenged you on.

Whatever assistance they referred to only changed the penalty not the fact the violation was found to be due to negligence not any attempt to cheat or intentionally ingestion of banned substances.

Yes, I am seriously asking you to show me a source of catching Jon Jones with steroids in his system because I know you can't produce one. You are just blatantly pandering to ignorant followers for validation. I know you do your research especially after being challenged, so you know as well as I do that Jon only has 3 violations total, but yet you claim a "multitude" of tests showing steroids in his system clearly a gross exaggeration to deny reality.

Even the first "tbol" violation was concluded again to be non intentional due to contamination, which did seem suspect at the time. but the second one claiming the same thing became a big problem. They had multiple negative tests just weeks before so when considered together it became obvious their testing was wrong because it was impossible to only find that same trace amount of the same metabolite if Jon Jones had actually taken tbol in the time between tests.

I guess you have your reasons for burying your head in the sand, needing to tell yourself Jon Jones' success is due to cheating to the extent of ignoring multiple cases of USADA and related arbitration panels officially concluding the opposite.

 

[Nathan LaMontagne]

It's a selective outrage. Plenty of well liked fighters have failed drug tests and get a pass. Or my favorite "Jones can't be the best because of PEDs but here's a list of Pride fighters I wack it to".

Two things.

1. If steroids were legal in Pride, it wasn't an unfair advantage.

2. Has anyone been allowed to game the system as much as Jones.

They literally moved an event to another state on a days notice because the first commission deemed him as cheating.
He concurrently had steroids in his system for the fight, that is official.

 

[Megatronlee]

No. Why didnt Usada catch everyone?

They did. At one time or another. Even dc had elevated test

 

[Tito Tapped]

Two things.

1. If steroids were legal in Pride, it wasn't an unfair advantage.

2. Has anyone been allowed to game the system as much as Jones.

They literally moved an event to another state on a days notice because the first commission deemed him as cheating.
He concurrently had steroids in his system for the fight, that is official.

1. Still considered controlled substances in Japan. Nothing "legal" about it. Not a chance fighters of that time we're going to licensed medical professionals for controlled treatment plan.

2. Yes. Many. We had an entire era where some fighters were allowed to take testosterone and as long as you didn't test right after you injected, your numbers would be fucked.

 

[Nathan LaMontagne]

1. Still considered controlled substances in Japan. Nothing "legal" about it. Not a chance fighters of that time we're going to licensed medical professionals for controlled treatment plan.

2. Yes. Many. We had an entire era where some fighters were allowed to take testosterone and as long as you didn't test right after you injected, your numbers would be fucked.

Controlled substance in Japan sure, but I'm pretty sure if I was juiced up, I could travel to any country and compete if there isn't testing for it.

And once again the TRT era while fucked, was technically legal (with a phony exemption at least)

 

[bambammccoy]

Well tbf I don’t think Casey Anthony is the GOAT either.

The evidence against Jones isn’t just circumstantial. Turanibol is a banned substance, which he popped for a zillion times. Clomiphene and Letrozole are banned substances. Jones has failed PED tests multiple times, he’s been stripped of titles for it twice. Ultimately, one either cares about those failures when ranking GOATs or they don’t.

Then it almost seems like once it gets to the very top of the sport in all time status it boils down to who was better at avoiding being caught.