Many people felt as though Jon Jones had gotten off light considering his recent hit & run incident. The UFC suspended him indefinitely and stripped him of his title but they didn’t release Jones and if he beats the charges ahead of him he could be immediately reinstated by the promotion.
His manager, Malki Kawa, seems to think that the UFC was a bit heavy in their punishment:
“I was very surprised,” Kawa said. “I didn’t think they were gonna do that. I don’t think they should have done that.”
“Jon Jones won that belt inside the Octagon,” Kawa told Ariel Helwani on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour. “Nobody beat him for the belt. That’s just one case in itself. But on the other hand, we’re jumping to a lot of conclusions. We haven’t let things play out. He hasn’t had his day in court and I don’t think it’s OK to just hand punishments down like that. But I do definitely understand where the UFC, sponsors and everyone is coming from. I can totally understand.”
Kawa went on to talk about someone else wearing Jones’ belt:
“If you’re Daniel Cormier and you win this belt, right, and you go parading around the world and you’re this and you’re that, do you think anyone on the face of this Earth can actually take you serious?” Kawa said. “It would be such a joke at that point.”
It wasn’t DC who decided to take cocaine in January, it wasn’t DC who decided to run from the scene of a crime and it wasn’t DC who disappeared for a day afterwards; these were all decisions made by Jon Jones. Jon only has himself to blame for losing his title.