Do we like them?

Do we like Jon Jones?

Our score: 4 out of 10. No campaigning against anyone turned up and there is some real charity, but a string of guilty pleas and arrests holds the score down.

The second big one came in Las Vegas in 2021. Jones was arrested in September and accused in the arrest report of domestic battery; he told police he did not get physical and said there was emotional tension with his fiancée. In December a plea deal dropped the battery charge. He pleaded no contest to destroying another person's property, was ordered to pay $750 in restitution and to attend anger management counselling, and got no jail time.

Then there is the 2025 Albuquerque crash. A woman in the crashed car named Jones as the driver, and he was charged after allegedly fleeing the scene. His lawyer says the accusation was false and that his phone records put him nowhere near it, and the charges were dropped. Jones said “I was never there” and that he had been fully vindicated. That one is dismissed, not proven, so we treat it as such.

The latest saga is a fight with his own employer. After the UFC announced a White House card without him, UFC leadership said he was never in the frame. Jones replied on X that his team had been in real negotiations and “I was lowballed”, then asked to be released from his contract. Separately, a driver posted a video in April alleging a road rage confrontation in Albuquerque; Jones said the other driver chased him for two blocks, and no charges were reported.

In May, Jones admitted to Quinton Jackson, backstage at an event in Los Angeles, that he fought dirty in their 2011 title fight, and apologised with a “my bad”. Jackson laughed it off. It's a cheeky confession rather than a scandal, but it does tell you a bit about the competitor.

The good stuff is real if modest. In 2020 he donated the equivalent of 100,000 meals to families in New Mexico through The Food Depot. Weigh that against a rap sheet that includes a guilty plea and a no contest plea, and you land on a bloke who isn't pushing hate but doesn't have a spotless record of treating people well. This card doesn't dig into his drug-testing history.