Although he has been cleared to fight at Saturday’s UFC 235, light heavyweight champion Jon Jones still has trace amounts of Turinabol in his system according to a Thursday report by MMAFighting.com.
According to their sources, samples collected by the Nevada Athletic Commission on February 14th and February 15 showed 40 picograms per milliliter and 20 picograms per milliliter, respectively.
The findings weren’t enough for the NAC to make any changes in licensing Jones for his Saturday title defense against Anthony Smith in Las Vegas as they feel the traces of the steroid are still of the long-term variety and not a new presence.
Jones and Turinabol have been linked since 2017 but the issues flared up in late-December when the promotion had to move UFC 232 to California from Las Vegas on a week’s notice due to various amounts of picograms found in Jones’ system between August and December 2018.
Because of the timing of UFC 232 around the holidays and the defense that the picograms were from a positive 2017 test, the UFC was concerned the NAC wouldn’t license Jones in time for his fight against Alexander Gustafsson. Thus, they infamously moved the event to Los Angeles.
Since then, Jones had to agree to testing throughout the year from VADA, the California State Athletic Commission, and NAC testing in addition to USADA. In late-January, Jones had a lengthy hearing in front of the NAC to explain the whole situation.
As documented in the MMA Fighting piece linked above, test results have come back completely clean and then partially positive off and on since December.