Jul. 6—Is Jon "Bones" Jones, the Barry Bonds of combat sports, the greatest MMA fighter of all time?
It depends on how one defines GOAT.
Since no athlete ever has come back to competition after retiring (right?), it seems safe at this point to reflect on the remarkable, and arguably unequaled, mixed martial arts career of Jonathan Dwight Jones.
Jones, an upstate New York native who's called Albuquerque home for the past 16 years, announced his retirement from MMA — or had it announced for him by UFC President Dana White, then confirmed it himself — on June 21.
I think we can trust him on that, don't you?
(Oh, wait — on Friday, Jones on X dangled the possibility of un-retiring, intrigued by the possibility of fighting on a UFC card at the White House — yes, that White House. President Donald Trump, an MMA fan who's friends with White, is talking about staging a UFC card in 2026 as part of the United States' 250th birthday celebration.
"Figured we'd keep everyone's options open," Jones wrote, noting that he's re-entered the UFC's drug-testing pool.
Can we believe anything Jones says regarding his future? Probably not. But for the time being, most of this column already written as I type this sentence, we'll proceed as if Friday never happened and he's really retiring.)
What a career it has been. By the numbers:
An overall record of 28-1, the lone defeat coming by disqualification for a "12-6" elbow that struck the head of lucky winner Matt Hamill (who otherwise would have lost via brutal stoppage) in the 2009 The Ultimate Fighter finale.
The rule that prompted the DQ was rescinded in 2024, and some have campaigned (unsuccessfully thus far) to have Jones' lone loss reversed or declared no contest.
A 15-0 record in UFC title fights, or 16-0 if one counts Jones' 2017 TKO victory over Daniel Cormier, later changed to no contest after Jones tested positive for a banned substance (more on that later).
A decade-long stranglehold on the UFC light heavyweight title, interrupted only by suspensions (more on that later).
A successful move from light heavyweight to heavyweight, winning and defending the heavyweight belt while weighing 30 to 40 pounds above the light heavyweight limit that was his competitive home for the first 12 years of his career.
Victories over Cormier, Stipe Miocic, Lyoto Machida, Glover Teixeira, Rashad Evans, Vitor Belfort and Mauricio Rua, UFC champions all.
We do not like thee, Jon 'Bones' Jones
Yet, even when the discussion is limited to his accomplishments in the cage — as many prefer not to do — there are detractors.
He's a drug cheat, some say. Yes, Jones twice was suspended after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs. Yet, it has never been established that the levels found in his system were high enough to have given him a physical advantage — even if that been his intention, which he always has denied.
In suspending him, the United States Anti-Drug Agency said it didn't believe Jones had intentionally ingested banned substances — sitting him down because it is any and every athlete's responsibility to know what goes into their bodies.
Some cite Jones' final two light heavyweight title defenses, shaky wins by decision over Thiago Santos and Dominick Reyes, as invalidating his candidacy for GOAThood.
Jones defeated Santos by split decision. As a counterpoint, note that among the 30 official scorecards submitted after Jones' 10 career victories by decision, only one, that of judge Junichiro Kamijo — 48-47 for Santos — favored Jones' opponent.
Although the decision for Jones vs. Reyes was unanimous — 48-47, 48-47, 49-46 — it's that fight that seems to really stick in the craw of the Bones bashers. It's true that, as listed on mma- decisions.com, 14 of 23 media scorecards favored Reyes.
It's also undeniably true that Chris Lee and Marcos Rosales, two of MMA's most experienced judges, scored the fight 48-47 for Jones. Lee and Rosales are not without their critics, but, where MMA judges are concerned, critics abound. And quibble all you want with the 49-46 card turned in by the far less experienced Joe Soliz.
Others — and they are legion, among both fans and fellow fighters — simply don't like Jon Jones.
Jones' long history of legal entanglements, starting with charges of leaving the scene of a hit-and-run accident in 2015, ending (for now, at least) with a similar charge last month, with an arrest for domestic violence in between (and that's the very short list), have not endeared Jones to the public.
Evaluations of his career, and of where he ranks in the MMA pantheon, should not be affected by his out-of-the-cage troubles. It's obvious that they are.
Why is Bonds, Major League Baseball's career and single-season home run king and beyond his power stats a consummate performer for decades, not in the baseball Hall of Fame? He has long been suspected of steroid use, so much so that it's widely accepted as fact, though he's never tested positive for PEDs.
Jones has already been inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame, so he needn't worry about that. Combat sports have their own standards for such things; promoter Don King, a numbers runner who once stomped a man to death, was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1997.
But, Hall of Fame or no Hall of Fame, drugs or no drugs, a lot of people simply don't like Barry Bonds.
Or Jon Jones.
The competition
With all that, there always have been other candidates for GOAT status.
Among active fighters, Ilia Topuria (17-0) bears watching.
Among oft-mentioned candidates of the past — Georges St-Pierre, Anderson Silva, Demetrious Johnson, Khabib Nurmagomedov — all but Nurmagomedov have lost in UFC competition. Real losses, not a loss by disqualification assessed according to a rule that no longer exists.
Therefore, or at least so it says here, only Nurmagomedov (29-0), based solely on performance, has a solid case. But Khabib's UFC résumé consists of only 10 fights, compared to Jones' 23.
Khabib retired at age 32, which shouldn't be held against him. But Jones was 35 when he defeated Ciryl Gane for the UFC heavyweight title, 37 when he successfully defended it against Miocic.
When Jones retired, seven months had passed since the Miocic fight — during which talk of a heavyweight title defense against England's Tom Aspinall never stopped bubbling. White said Jones had agreed to defend against Aspinall; Jones said he hadn't. Jones is ducking Aspinall, the critics cried.
(In announcing Jones' retirement, White also announced that Aspinall is now the UFC heavyweight champion. Presumably, that would not change if Jones were to un-retire.)
After Jones retired, Cormier — the unelected president of the We Don't Like Jon Jones Club — called his old nemesis a quitter.
Really?
Cormier (22-3, or 22-4 if his second loss to Jones hadn't been set aside) retired in 2020 after back-to-back losses to Miocic.
There's something to be said, Daniel, for quitting while you're ahead.
