Jon Jones' UFC retirement leaves a complicated legacy — and the final chapter will always be a part of it
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“Jon Jones called us last night and retired.”
That’s how it ended, according to UFC CEO Dana White. The man who would be GOAT called it a career via late-night phone call some seven months after his first UFC heavyweight title defense. So he claims, anyway.
In between the last trip into the cage and the final phone call there was a lot of time-wasting and truth-bending, with the result being … this. A laughably anticlimactic end to a great though troubled career. (Immediately after which, we’d discover he has yet another case pending back home in Albuquerque. But more on that later.) All of it makes you wonder, if we were going to just do this in the end, couldn’t we have done it half a year ago?
It also raises the question: How much will this messy, frustrating final chapter shape Jones’ overall legacy as an MMA and UFC great?
Jones was never going to fight interim champ Tom Aspinall. That ought to be clear by now. In all his many public statements, by which I mostly mean tweet responses to internet randos who called him out for ducking the fight, the one thing Jones never said was that he had definite plans to beat up big Tom at some point in the future.
Sometimes he said maybe. Plenty of times he came right out and said no. He claimed that Aspinall just didn’t excite him enough, and said it was pointless because if he beat him then there’d just be another guy after that.
(A couple things about that claim: 1. That is basically what it means to be champion. Challengers keep stepping up and you are expected to fight them. That’s how it works. That’s how it has always worked. 2. Look around at the UFC’s heavyweight division right now. Does it seem like the big problem is the abundance of interesting contenders? This was the big one, man. The only heavyweight money fight out there.)
Refusing to accept what is essentially the most interesting challenge Jones has faced in at least five years, it's not a great look. Making us all wait until we’re sick of even talking about it before finally admitting that he wasn’t up for it is plain dumb. It’s what you would do if you were a pro-wrestling heel trying to turn the audience against you. And while Jones seems to enjoy a good troll job, it’s hard for me to believe that his master plan all along was to make himself hated by fans on his way out the door of this sport.
Jones cares about legacy. He cares a lot, even if he doesn’t always want to admit it. It’s why he insisted on fighting Stipe Miocic in his first and only heavyweight title defense. He wanted to add Miocic’s name to his résumé so he could say he beat the best in two weight classes. He was just hoping we wouldn’t notice that the version of Miocic he beat was on the wrong side of 40 and mostly retired already.
That’s the other thing about how Jones views legacy, though. He’s always seemed to think that it was up to him to decide what we thought of him. Because that’s all legacy is, at the end of the day. It’s what the majority of the people tell each other about who you were and what you did.
Jones has, from the very beginning of his career, looked at it as a public relations challenge he could shape at his whim. It’s why he tried to portray himself as the polite, humble choir boy at first. That didn’t hold up long. He crashed too many cars and showed up on too many police bodycams for that image to endure even the slightest scrutiny.
Later he rebranded as the reformed bad boy who had grown through suffering, becoming a better person after all the trials and tribulations (that he put himself through). The fact that his retirement announcement was immediately overshadowed by news of yet another charge for vehicular misbehavior, this one involving an intoxicated woman found "lacking clothing from the waist down" in a crashed car that she said Jones was driving before he ran off and left her there? Well, it doesn’t exactly scream: Here’s a guy who’s learned his lesson.
Jones wants to tell us who he is and how we should view his time in this sport. But that decision isn’t up to him. Fans can be forgiving with the benefit of time, but they also have long memories for things like disappointment and anger. Jones has disappointed them plenty, both in and out of the cage. He’s also thrilled them at times, showing them what it would look like if one fighter were miles ahead of the pack.
The single most consistent part of Jones’ story was that he always remained the greatest threat to his own ambitions and the only limit on his own ability. No one could stop him in the cage. Outside of it, he couldn’t stop himself from lighting it all on fire, then begging for mercy and swearing to be better from now on, then doing it again.
He was our spoiled genius, a petulant boy king who kept threatening to finally grow up but never really did. He also might have been the greatest fighter this sport has ever known, but he couldn’t ever stay focused on that goal long enough to keep showing up in ways that would have removed all doubt.
That, along with everything else, will be one of the things we’ll have to say when we look back on Jones’ career. He could have done more. He probably should have done more. He lost or squandered years of his prime, then rode off into the Thai sunset on the back of a moped when faced with the (literally) biggest challenge available. That page, too, gets stapled onto his permanent record whether he likes it or not.
He was our spoiled genius, a petulant boy king who kept threatening to finally grow up but never really did.
Is this really the last we see of Jones in the UFC? I kind of doubt it. I think once he sees how quickly the sport and the heavyweight division moves on without him — and once he sees what life is like as a former UFC champ — he’ll want back in. I’d be surprised if, by this time next year, he’s still as retired as he claims.
But if it is the end, his legacy won’t be a simple one. And it won’t be one that he alone gets to dictate. Jones’ story is about greatness, but it’s also about the price of it. Here was a man who was so good and gifted at this one specific thing that he almost couldn’t help but take it for granted. He treated his peerless career like it was a toy he could dangle out the window of a moving car, just for the thrill of seeing how close he could come to losing it entirely. We watched in awe of the fighter, then shook our heads in weary dismay at the man. We end (or so we’re told) by repeating that pattern.
There goes Jon Jones, maybe the greatest of all time. But also maybe not. We’re sad to see him go with business left unfinished. But also maybe we’re not.
