You know what’s weird? There’s an epic UFC card this weekend, with UFC 232 bringing us a massive fight between champs Cris Cyborg and Amanda Nunes. Plus, the card has the likes of BJ Penn, Uriah Hall, Carlos Condit and Andrei Arlovski. But would you know that based on the flow of news coming out of the event? Hell no. Because Jon Jones is on the card, and as usual, the former champ’s drug habits are overshadowing everything. EVERYTHING.

I mean, there’s a plus side to Jones’ shenanigans and all the press they attract. For instance, Deadspin is covering this UFC, when normally they’d maybe make one post about the aftermath of whatever happens on Saturday night. Here’s them harping on Dana White, who apparently doesn’t give a crap about all the taxes the fighters will have to pay because of the sudden move from Nevada to California.

UFC president Dana White was a bit of a shithead towards a reporter on Thursday during the press conference for the recently-relocated UFC 232. To make things easier for Jon Jones to participate in the headlining fight after an “atypical” drug test, the pay-per-view event was move from Las Vegas to Los Angeles on six days’ notice. This move obviously does more than just inconvenience an audience of paying customers, it also screws over the fighters on the lower end of the night’s card, who suddenly have to factor in more taxes on their paycheck.

Naturally, this issue came up on Thursday. When asked if he would help compensate fighters who have to pay higher taxes because of the move, White simply turned the question on the reporter and tried to make himself look like a victim in this scenario.

Also, it seems that Lance Armstrong has chimed in about the Jones thing. This is according to champ Daniel Cormier. (Armstrong, you see, loved them performance enhancing drugs, just like Jones.)

Oh, guess what? Apparently the UFC was collecting these failed Jon Jones drug tests like they were a new fad. One wonders what took them so long in deciding to move UFC 232…

As per MMAFighting:

[Jeff] Novitzky, the UFC’s vice president of athlete health and performance, appeared Thursday on The Joe Rogan Experience to explain Jones’ recent drug-testing situation and the UFC’s decision to uproot UFC 232 from Las Vegas to Los Angeles on less than a week’s notice. Novitzky revealed that Jones first tested positive for trace amounts of a longterm metabolite of oral turinabol in an Aug. 29 drug screening conducted by USADA. That test discovered eight picograms of the oral turinabol metabolite in Jones’ system and followed an Aug. 9 drug screening that came back clean. Novitzky said that Jones’ next drug test, on Sept. 18, also came back positive for 19 picograms of the same longterm oral turinabol metabolite.

Finally, here’s the man himself – Jones – rambling about… oh man, who knows. As per MMAFighting:

“I think through science I will be vindicated,” Jones said. “I passed the [polygraph] test with pretty much the FBI, which means if I was lying, I go to jail for perjury. I passed the polygraph test saying that I’ve never intentionally taken anything illegal to enhance myself and now that science is starting to show itself, you will realize that — half the people that are judging me haven’t opened a chemistry book since high school. It’s true, it’s so true. So people are ignoring the fact that a picogram, this shit is so small it almost should have never been brought up. It’s so small. It’s such a small amount, it has no effect.

“And I think a lot of the professionals, whether it’s USADA or the UFC are realizing Jon has actually been, he’s kind of like a guinea pig in this situation, almost wronged in this situation. Even though it was in me, I think this is a way of fixing a wrong and making it right again, by not canceling this fight and keeping the fight on ultimately for the fans because this could have been canceled. So even though a lot of fans got hurt in this situation, we saved the event. Look at all the people that got to be here, all the people that are planning on ordering the fight around the world. Like Dana said, the organization’s doing everything they can to make it right, giving discounts and comping families and doing all types of stuff. So changing the event instead of canceling the event I feel is the way of making this right.”

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