Jon Jones has had a rough couple weeks. After turning down a last minute change of opponents from Dan Henderson to Chael Sonnen for any number of reasons, Jones has had a number of stories come out that haven’t painted him in a bad light since his DUI earlier in the year. The first was that he had asked Chael Sonnen to back off from his Twitter war with the light heavyweight champion; the other was that he offered to pay the purses for the undercard fighters at UFC 151 if they would not say anything negative about him. Then he opted to give his first full, in-depth interview since the incident with Ariel Helwani about everything UFC 151.
It’s a fascinating interview that we don’t get to hear from the champion, of course, and it sheds an insight into the champion we don’t get all that often. I’ve been watching Jones since he made a short notice debut and looked like a future world champion who was just remarkably raw at that point; to see him come this far has been nothing short of remarkable. But right now he’s going through some growing pains that he’ll necessarily get through. Nike just signed him and is going to invest in the Jones brand as the next big thing in combat sports. The interview showed that that Jones is going to need a lot to get back into the good graces of MMA fans, et al. But what exactly does he need to do? Three things, really.
1. Get a Good Public Relations Firm … and Make Them Train you for Week on Proper P.R work
The one thing that was noticeable throughout this whole mess is that no matter what Jones said he kept making it worse. What’s the first thing you do when you’re in a hole that you’re trying to get out of? Stop digging. The one thing that stands out most about Jones is that he might be the worst of the UFC champions when it comes to doing publicity and interviews; he doesn’t quite have the polish someone like Georges St. Pierre does. GSP may be repetitive in selling a fight but he comes off like a professional athlete and not a fighter; that’s a big reason why Jones to Nike for a global deal is a big to do.
Jones isn’t being looked at as a fighter, as some bar room brawler who makes a living as a prize fighter. It’s the difference in how boxers and MMA fighters are viewed en masse by the sporting public. Jones is going to be the guy everyone is banking on changing that notion. But what does he need to do to get there? Get as good at PR as he is at fighting and get a good firm out there behind him to smooth out the rough spots.
2. Wreck Opponents in Devastating Fashion
How did Anderson Silva get past a three fight streak where he just seemed like he didn’t care all that much? Finish guys. Nothing makes people forget flaws like winning; Lebron James went from being a crybaby who took the easy way out to a championship contender to all sorts of accolades by winning a title with the Heat this year. Winning absolves all your sins in sport and Jones finishing opponents at the same clip as he’s done before will make most people forget this little rough patch in life.
Much like how Just Brandeis thought that sunlight is the best disinfectant in transparency and openness, winning is the best disinfectant in sport. All Jones has to do now is what Al Davis would’ve told him to do: “Just Win, Baby.”
3. Wait for Some Time Away from this … and Mature As a Person Some More
The further Jones distances himself from this on a sheer time level the more people will forget. At this point people make fun of Chael Sonnen, et al, for allegedly masking steroid use with TRT and yet Josh Barnett, he of the three steroid positive tests that sank a UFC championship run and Affliction’s MMA promotion, gets a pass for the most part. Why? Because it happened so long ago that it’s at the back of people’s minds.
Three years from now only people who really dislike Jones are going to hold this against him. Jones is also in his mid-20s right now and still growing into himself as a human being; as he gets closer to 30 Jones will grow and mature enough as a person that the way he handles things will have changed drastically. We tend to forget about Jones’s youth in all of this right now; we expect him to handle it like a more mature individual and he’s not the 30 to 40 something many of us criticizing him are.
