Jon Jones has retired from mixed martial arts (presumably, at least, assuming it sticks), but he’s in the news for other reasons as well.
Shortly after news broke on Saturday that Jones had hung up the gloves, resulting in interim heavyweight title holder Tom Aspinall being promoted to undisputed champion (with apologies to Francis Ngannou), a fresh report emerged that Jones was facing a new criminal complaint.
Per the Albuquerque Journal, Jones is facing a misdemeanor charge of leaving the scene of an accident, from an incident alleged to have transpired in February.
While that in and of itself may seem like a minor infraction (Jones’ personal history is riddled with arrests and accusations of assault and domestic violence), the details of the incident become a little more disturbing.
According to police investigating the February incident, a woman “exhibiting signs of significant intoxication and lacking clothing from the waist down” was found in a vehicle involved in a collision on February 21, and later reported that Jones had been driving. She added that Jones had fled the scene on foot – eerily similar to a 2015 incident when he collided with the vehicle of a pregnant woman, fled the scene, returned to collect cash left in his own car, then fled a second time.
In this latest incident, police spoke to a man they believed to be Jones via phone, only to end up threatened. Jones “appeared to be heavily intoxicated and made statements implying his capacity to employ lethal force through third parties,” court records claim according to the report in the Journal.
Jones, interviewed several days later, did not dispute that it was himself on the phone, but claimed the intoxicated woman had left his home on her own, and that he had doubted the “legitimacy” of the police officer who had phone him, as they “immediately opened the conversations with unprofessional language.”
The now-retired UFC star was not charged until months after the fact. Call records acquired by police show he phoned the half-naked woman found in the vehicle 13 times between the time of the crash, and the following morning.
Jon Jones has yet to address these latest allegations. Last year, he faced charges of assault and interference with communications following an altercation during a visit by Drug Free Sport, who now handle drug test sample collection for the UFC. Those charges were dismissed in October after an agreement was reached to have the star attend anger management counselling, and on the condition that he stay out of trouble for 90 days.
He just barely passed that mark.
