Mike Winkeljohn takes partial blame for Jon Jones woes outside of cage

While former UFC light heavyweight champion, and arguable pound for pound kingpin Jon Jones is without a doubt one of the greatest fighters of all time, Jones’ struggles outside of the Octagon have tarnished his legacy in the eyes of some.

While Jones was cleared of any wrong-doing in the case of his failed random out-of-competition drug test back in July that resulted in his being pulled from his UFC 200 headlining scrap just 48 hours before fight-night, ‘Bones’ is still serving a one-year suspension for the situation despite the fact that the failed drug test was the result of a tainted supplement.

Prior to that, Jones made headlines when he was given multiple tickets from a police officer for allegedly drag racing. Before that, Jones was stripped of the light heavyweight championship and suspended after a hit-and-run incident in April of 2015.

The way JacksonWinkeljohn head coach Mike Winkeljohn sees it, he too is partly to blame for Jones’ troubles outside of the Octagon.

He spoke to MMAFighting:

“It’s tough, there’s no doubt about it,” Winkeljohn said on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour. “There’s a lot of disappointing times that Jon’s had in the past, and that in some ways we’re all kind of responsible for, in that we haven’t given him the proper guidance.

“But this last one, really it was him just doing childish things. He wasn’t cheating, he wasn’t doing anything that way — I don’t know what the media did to propel it as such. But he’s just not being smart enough and I think they threw him under the bus because of his past problems. They’re looking at him saying, hey, you should have asked if this drug could have been tainted with anything.”

“I think that, yeah, I think that probably I should have yelled at him more often, that type of thing,” he says. “It’s mostly that he’s made his own bed, there’s no doubt about it. But hopefully we keep talking to him, and I think he’s turned the corner. He knows, and I think he’s driven to better himself and get back to what’s important in life and not just having fun.”