Jon “Bones” Jones supposedly cemented himself as the “Greatest of All Time” or GOAT by submitting the interim heavyweight champion, Cyril “Bon Gamin” Gane in two minutes with a guillotine choke.

On March 4, returning from a three-year break from the Ultimate Fighting Championship, Jones moved up a weight class from light heavyweight at 205 to heavyweight at 248, to become the heavyweight champion of the world.

Despite Jones defeating a lineup of legends in the sport to maintain his impressive “undefeated” record, I don’t consider him the GOAT.

Jones tested positive for steroids multiple times throughout his career, and his fight against legend Daniel Cormier was declared a no-contest because Jones failed a drug test for performance-enhancing drugs.

Former UFC fighter, Chael Sonnen, recalls his encounter with Jones when they fought in 2013. Sonnen openly admits to his steroid use during his career and undoubtedly believes Jones was also enhanced.

“We know our own,” Sonnen said, “I had more juice than Tropicana and he pushed me around like a Mack Truck. I remember thinking, ‘I know your secret, ‘cause I got the same one.’”

Sonnen, alongside plenty of successful UFC fighters, has been caught cheating. Before USADA was implemented in 2015, steroid testing was loose and resulted in blatantly juiced beasts like Alister Overeem and Vitor Belfort, who were built more like bodybuilders than fighters.

It’s hard to say which fighters have cheated and which fighters have stayed clean their whole career because it’s easy to avoid getting caught, which makes it unfair to accuse certain fighters of Performance Enhancing Drug usage when there are plenty of PED users who simply haven’t got caught.

Despite his controversial history of cheating, Jones’ skill as a fighter makes him a true martial artist and one of the most complete fighters in mixed martial arts history.

As an accomplished wrestler in college, his strong base of wrestling mixed with the striking from Muay Thai and kickboxing, coupled with a purple belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu makes him an incredibly versatile fighter. Jones’ use of knees and elbows beautifully showcases how martial artists use every part of their bodies as a weapon.

However, I don’t think that just his skill can make him the GOAT.

Currently, Georges St-Pierre, former double champion of the welterweight and middleweight divisions, remains the GOAT of MMA for me. St-Pierre has defeated every opponent put in front of him, paved the way for modern MMA by being the first truly complete martial artist in the UFC, while also never failing a drug test. 

Jones’ abilities are undisputed, but for Jones to be the GOAT, he has to prove himself by continuing his career clean of steroids. The UFC must have more intensive drug restrictions to have fairer fights, so that any fighter who has even one picogram of steroids in their system is banned from the sport and stripped of their titles. 

We are witnessing one of the greatest fighters of all time reach the twilight of his career at 35, and honestly, he has a chance to be the GOAT, but he won’t be able to reach that status until he proves himself in the octagon without the influence of steroids.