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

Jon Jones is widely regarded as arguably the greatest MMA fighter of all-time but perhaps the biggest argument against that particular accolade comes down to his history with performance-enhancing drugs.

The entire fight industry learned about the word picograms thanks to a positive drug test returned by Jones that showed traces of Turinabol — an anabolic steroid — in his system prior to a knockout win over Daniel Cormier. The California State Athletic Commission eventually overturned the win to a no-contest, although Jones continued to proclaim his innocence.

Jones was also pulled from a scheduled fight against Cormier at UFC 200 after failing a separate drug test with a pair of banned substances in his system, which earned him a one-year suspension. When putting together his list of the greatest fighters in history for a “Mount Rushmore of MMA,” Cormier omitted Jones because of his history with performance-enhancing drugs and while he certainly understands that reasoning, UFC legend Matt Brown doesn’t agree with him.

“My two cents is realistically that should not negate him because the vast majority of guys he’s competing against are doing the same shit,” Brown said on The Fighter vs. The Writer. “The whole USADA, whatever drug testing they have now … the whole thing is a cat and mouse game. If you have the money, you can beat it. That’s pretty much in every sport. Lance Armstrong is definitely the greatest biker ever,and he never tested positive. Are you going to say he’s not? And he’s going against guys that were [cheating also].

“So I think [for Cormier] it’s a little bit personal. If you believe that USADA, the drug tests, that’s real and it’s actually stopping people, then you can say Jon Jones should not be the greatest or out Mount Rushmore or whatever because of that specific incident or multiple incidents for Jon Jones, I guess. But if you look at it realistically, the vast majority are doing it if they can afford to do it or they have the means to do it.”

With 15 years spent competing in the UFC, Brown believes there were plenty of fighters using illegal substances to gain an advantage but not everybody got caught by the drug testing protocols.

Truth be told, Brown understands the desire to succeed can often drive athletes to make those decisions and fighters competing in the UFC are no different.

“There was a study somewhere, sometime and they were talking to Olympic athletes and they were like if I gave you this pill and you would win the gold medal, like you knew for a fact you’d win the gold medal with this pill but you also knew that you would die next year or next week or some shit like that, would you still take the pill? Everybody was like yeah,” Brown said. “It was something like 80 or 90 percent of them said ‘f*ck yeah, I’d take the pill.’

“That’s our whole life, our whole identity is fighting. If you can take something that’s going to maximize that, the vast majority of people will do it. There are ones that wouldn’t like Jon Fitch never did, I never did. I think that there are exceptions to that rule. There are exceptions. But the largest majority of people would do it, and until you’re in that situation, don’t say that you wouldn’t either.”

When it comes to Jones specifically, Brown doesn’t deny that the former UFC heavyweight and light heavyweight champion took illegal substances during his career.

Brown just doesn’t hold that against him but he understands why others might.

“It’s not a question of whether he did or not,” Brown said. “We basically know he did something. I think that’s all it comes down. It’s a personal view on how you view all those things. Are you going to look at it realistically like everybody’s doing it and the largest majority of the guys he beat were probably doing shit, too. He just did it better. If you want to look at the facts of the positive drug test, I understand that side, too. I think there’s an argument both ways.”

While Jones legitimately got busted for performance-enhancing drug use, Brown hears accusations all the time aimed at other fighters who potentially used banned substances. Call it pessimism but Brown just take the viewpoint that athletes all try to gain an advantage and there’s almost no way Jones didn’t win some of his biggest fights against opponents doing something illegal.

“I think it’s just a personal opinion on whether you want to take that into account or not,” Brown argues. “In terms of accomplishments, you can’t say [Jon Jones] wasn’t the best ever. It’s a difficult argument to make anything else. But when you get into who did steroids and who didn’t, it’s basically all opinion at that point. If you just want to talk about Jon Jones, Anderson Silva [etc.], they tested positive. OK.

“That’s an easy argument but you could talk about [Georges St-Pierre], there was a lot of opinions that he was on shit. You could take just about all of the guys in that GOAT argument, and it’s an opinion whether they were on shit or not.”