Daniel Cormier reacts to news of ‘atypical finding’ on Jon Jones drug test

A recent Jon Jones drug test has detected trace amounts of turinabol, the same drug he tested positive for after his UFC 214 title fight with Daniel Cormier. This chaotic turn of events has caused the UFC to move the upcoming UFC 232 card, where Jon Jones was expected to rematch Alexander Gustafsson, from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. The card will still occur on December 29 as originally planned. Jones and Gustafsson’s fight will also go ahead as planned in this new setting.

To be clear, this does not mean Jon Jones failed a drug test.

The UFC opted to move the card because the Nevada State Athletic Commission, who would have overseen the card if it had stayed in Las Vegas, did not have time to properly investigate this incident (click here for a more extensive report on this story).

Whatever the case, it should come as no surprise that Daniel Cormier was quick to react to this wild turn of events..

See what the chief rival of Jon Jones had to say below:

He tested positive again!

— Daniel Cormier (@dc_mma) December 23, 2018

“He tested positive again!” Daniel Cormier said in his short but sweet statement to this chaotic Jon Jones situation.

Smh….. pic.twitter.com/7ANsAIL0jf

— Daniel Cormier (@dc_mma) December 24, 2018

To reiterate, Jon Jones has not officially failed a drug test. Instead, UFC VP of Athlete Health and Performance Jeff Novitzky told MMAjunkie, it’s more likely that this “atypical finding” is due to Jones’ previous ingestion of a banned substance, not his re-ingestion of the same substance.

Apparently, the amount of turinabol detected on this test was equivalent to “picogram” levels.

“A picogram is a one-trillionth of a gram,” Novitzky told MMAjunkie. “If you put one grain of salt on the table and split it up into 50 million pieces, a picogram is one of those pieces of that gram of salt. These levels have shown up in the single and double digits of picograms – so such a small amount.”

“There’s been no violation of the anti-doping program,” he added. “He’s been cleared to fight in terms of the USADA program. … USADA fully analyzed it internally. They reached out to outside experts from around the world. They reached out to another sports league that has seen the same issue. And all of them, independent of us, determined that this was not a reingestion of the substance and this very, very small amount that was occurring and still showing up, according to these expects from around the world, did not provide any performance-enhancing benefit.

“Not much is known about this longterm metabolite. The parent compound is not approved for human use anywhere in the world … but what both USADA and other entities are seeing is that a recurrence, or potential ‘pulsing,’ where you have multiple negative tests and then a positive one for a very low amount – they’re seeing that quite commonly over time. And no one knows how long this could last – it could potentially last forever (in Jon Jones’ system).”

Stay turned for more information on this situation as it emerges.

This article first appeared on BJPENN.COM on 12/23/2018.