5 of the most infamous fighters in UFC history

#5 Jon Jones – infamous for failing drug tests

Jon Jones' drug test failures have made him infamous

Plenty of fighters have failed drug tests while competing in the UFC over the years – even huge names like Anderson Silva and Alistair Overeem and champions like Tim Sylvia and Josh Barnett – but one fighter has become more infamous than any other for testing positive for banned substances, despite not failing a test for the first 8 years of his UFC career. Step forward Jon Jones.

Jones – widely recognised as the greatest 205lbs fighter in UFC history and one of the greatest MMA fighters of all time – first tested positive for a banned substance following his win over Daniel Cormier in January 2015. Jones was flagged for the use of cocaine, although being a recreational drug, this came with no penalty.

Worse was to follow, however. Prior to his rematch with Cormier at UFC 200 in July 2016, Jones tested positive for the banned substance clomiphene – an estrogen blocker. Jones was immediately removed from the event and eventually suspended for a year.

Upon his return in July 2017, Jones defeated Cormier in their eventual fight, only to test positive again in the post-fight tests – this time for the banned steroid turanibol – and was hit with another ban. Most recently, he was flagged again for turanibol – although controversially, this was explained by the prior positive test as a “residual effect” – and this resulted in the move of UFC 232 from Las Vegas to Los Angeles.

Whether Jones is genuinely a drug cheat, or whether he’s simply been both very unlucky and very naive is still up in the air, but either way, it’s hard to deny that the reigning UFC Light-Heavyweight champion is the most infamous fighter in the promotion when it comes to failed tests.