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UFC’s call on Jon Jones is about long-term legitimacy

This is what it looks like: Broken. Contradictory. Mystified. Beaten.

This is the price of legitimacy: Jon Jones as a living, breathing, denying, crying Jordan meme.

For the UFC, it’s as devastating as it is admirable.

When the UFC announced a new and improved and mouthful-of-teeth drug policy last year by contracting the United States Anti-Doping Agency to implement an Olympic-type testing system with fighters, it did so with the sincere intentions of cleaning up the sport.

It was a good faith move in regard to an improbable task of totally stopping those who use, believing that by allowing such a respected and independent global source to police potential use of performance-enhancing drugs, the UFC in this matter would evolve from punch line to praiseworthy overnight.

But you don’t take such serious steps with the hope your best and most profitable athletes ever test positive, certainly not a few days before the biggest and most historic card in the organization’s history.

In the back room of secrecy, you probably want one or two lesser names, fighters few know or care about and certainly aren’t the reason for purchasing pay-per-views, to get caught as a way to show the system is working. Those guys can be discarded like last week’s trash, and you can proudly proclaim the sport is ridding itself of cheaters.

Jones as one of all-time greats and immense money-makers is profoundly different, and his removal from the main event of UFC 200 on Saturday at T-Mobile Arena for a potential violation of the anti-doping policy will test the company’s resolve in the area of drug testing as it never desired in that back room.

Let’s hope the answer is to bow its back and stand firm on its stated goals, that the UFC endures the sting of short-term pain for the benefits of long-term health to its fighters and reputation without changing course.

It’s true president Dana White and CEO Lorenzo Fertitta have never grasped with any sense of reality the media’s role and responsibilities when covering the sport, but the UFC’s two most powerful figures should be commended for this: They always put the brand first, to make those three letters bigger than any one fighter. Bigger than a pompous Conor McGregor, who wouldn’t adhere to UFC 200 media obligations and was removed from the card. Bigger than Jones now testing positive.

For his part, Jones is either incredibly stupid or arrogant. Maybe both. The excuse that someone of his standing and wealth and connections and stature within the MMA world doesn’t know how an illegal supplement could find itself into his system was long ago banished by any reasonable soul as unacceptable and inconceivable.

No one with any sort of clue about this stuff believes it anymore.

Haven’t in a long time.

Tainted. Not tainted. This is entirely on him.

He should be afforded due process, and if he somehow wins Powerball, or the equivalent by having his B sample return negative, Jones could avoid whatever suspension USADA decides fits those agents found in his body.

The popular assumption is a two-year ban, but there have been doping cases where “mitigating circumstances” caused USADA to shorten such discipline.

Either way, the Frustrating Saga that is Jon Jones continues.

First it was testing positive for cocaine, then it was fleeing the scene of a hit-and-run accident, and in between were all sorts of traffic issues — Jones doesn’t appear to be the best of drivers — and now this right before UFC 200.

But he’s talented and makes the company a lot of money, which is why Jones now also becomes the witness test for how serious the UFC is about its drug testing program and ramifications for those who cheat.

The immediacy of this is awful for the UFC, having to pull a Jones-Daniel Cormier light heavyweight title bout and all the drama and buildup and bad feelings between the two that could have made it such a memorable finale to the weeklong festivities surrounding UFC 200.

Cormier will now meet Anderson Silva (who knows a little something about testing positive for PEDs) in a three-round nontitle light heavyweight bout Saturday — definitely a better matchup than none at all — but it’s still impossible to match the sort of spectacle a fight against Jones could have produced.

This is how things look at the top of 200 now: Miesha Tate vs. Amanda Nunes. Brock Lesnar vs. Mark Hunt. Cormier-Silva.

The UFC card you believed would prove the greatest in history, that slick new Ferrari with fancy rims and aftermarket seats and the best of sound systems, might instead offer something resembling a really nice 2016 Hyundai Sonata with standard options.

But while that might seem too costly and disastrous in the moment, it’s a commendable and needed path for the UFC to continue following.

This is much bigger than Jon Jones or one historic card or if a group of investors has really offered to buy the company for $4 billion.

This is the price of legitimacy when it comes to the health of fighters, and while incredibly steep, that is worth everything.

Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be a heard on “Seat and Ed” on Fox Sports 1340 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. On Twitter: @edgraney

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