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Light heavyweight champion Jon Jones is en route to Las Vegas to meet with UFC president Dana White and UFC chairman/CEO Lorenzo Fertitta tonight. Obviously, the meeting will be centered on Jones’ DWI arrest on Saturday morning.
Jones was arrested after totaling his Bentley in a crash with a telephone pole in Binghamton, N.Y., which neighbors his hometown of Endicott. Jones didn’t suffer any injuries in the crash. There was an apology posted on his Facebook page yesterday, but it has since been deleted.
Jones can expect a very frank discussion when he meets with White, who said he’s “super disappointed and bummed out.” Jones has a squeaky clean reputation, so the question White has is if this incident is a precursor to more issues or a one-time mistake.
“It’s really sitting down and figuring out what is it you want to do,” White told the Herald before meeting with Jones. “You’re 24 years old, you could be a force in this sport for the next 10 years and go down as the greatest ever – beat everybody, do all this stuff, be the first guy to break through and get a Nike deal, the first guy to get Gatorade and all these other things. Do you want to be that guy or do you want to go the other way? You can go the other way, too, and you can be the total bad guy, make a few million here or there and then go tell everybody to go, ‘(Expletive) off.’ It’s no different whether it’s the UFC, boxing, the NBA, the NFL – it’s the guys who really focus and get their (stuff) together no matter how old you are, whether you’re 21 or 31. That’s what we’ve got to figure out where Jones is at and what he wants to do.”
There is no denying Jones’ talent. The question that this incident raised for White is if Jones has the commitment to maximize that talent.
“The road is littered with talented guys who didn’t live up to their potential,” White said.
Patriots fans might know Jon best for being the older brother of first round draft pick Chandler. In a series I wrote on Chandler’s background, I spent a few hours with Jon. You can find much of that material here.
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