Michael Bisping shares doubts about Jon Jones’ drug testing situation

Former UFC middleweight champion Michael Bisping has some lingering questions about Jon Jones’s drug testing situation.

Ahead of his UFC 232 title fight with Alexander Gustafsson, a Jon Jones drug test detected trace amounts of the banned substance turinabol. To make matters worse, UFC executive Jeff Novitzky revealed on an episode of the Joe Rogan Experience MMA show that small amounts of turinabol had turned up on several other Jones drug tests dating back to August. 

While the UFC stacked these Jon Jones test anomalies up to a sensation called ‘pulsing’ — essentially leftover traces from his previous ingestion of a banned substance — Michael Bisping still finds the situation a bit sketchy.

The former champ weighed in on the situation on his Believe You Me podcast recently.

https://youtu.be/4aJKZRRPt4Q

“So Jon Jones passed his post-fight drug test, which was the question that I asked him which pissed him off which led to him being kind of annoyed with me on the post-fight show,” Bisping said (transcript via MMA Fighting). “I don’t want to turn this into Michael Bisping sh*tting on Jon Jones because he’s a legendary fighter – he was the youngest ever champion in the UFC. But to me – and I don’t know the science, I’m speaking purely from the standpoint that this is a fair question to ask – the narrative as to why he failed the drug test and failed multiple drug tests in August, September, and December, is that these metabolites from the turinabol were in his system from years ago and they could still be there for years and then all of a sudden he tests positive and then it’s brought to the forefront – Devil’s advocate, you would have to be f*cking stupid to continue microdosing – then all of a sudden, voila, the next time he gets tested it is out of his system. I don’t know. I’m not saying that is the reality, I’m just saying that is the first thing that I thought and I’d be lying if I didn’t say so. . .

“That was the narrative going into this fight: ‘Listen, this is remnants, it was leftover from whenever it was.’ But the point of the matter is that Jeff Novitzky was saying, everyone was saying this could be in his system for a long, long time and then , lo and behold, he tests clean.”

Despite the controversies that preceded UFC 232, Jon Jones’s fight night drug test came back clean. As a fan of Jones, Michael Bisping hopes this trend continues.

“I’m glad he tested clean, I really am,” said Bisping. “I hope he continues to do so. He’s a great talent, he’s a great fighter, and I’m glad Jon Jones is back. I’m glad anytime fighters come back.

“I hope he stays clean. I don’t hope he passes his tests and gets away with it. I hope he stays clean. They’re two very different things. I don’t hope he gets away with it. I hope he’s competing on a level playing field and we get to see the best Jon Jones that we can.”

What do you think of these comments from Michael Bisping?

This article first appeared on BJPENN.COM on 1/14/2019.