Former UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Jon Jones is back in action at UFC 232, facing Alexander Gustafsson in a rematch for the soon to be vacated light heavyweight title.
Joe Rogan once smoked weed with a then not signed to the UFC Jones, which Rogan believes led the fighter to start training at Team Jackson-Winklejohn.
“Early on Jon Jones, he wasn’t anything then – 4-0, maybe, something like that – meeting him, talking about s**t - and I can talk about this now because it’s no longer a banned substance in the UFC - talking about weed. And he was like, ‘Yeah, let’s smoke, bro.’ He wasn’t anything. He wasn’t anything, and just going like, ‘Who’s got weed?’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, Rogan’s got it, but he’s in his hotel room,’ and texting you . . . ‘Hey, man, are you up?’ And you’re like, ‘Yeah, I’m kind of tired. I’m going to sleep.’ It was like, ‘F**k, Jon, I think he doesn’t want us up there,’ and then be like, ‘No, no, let’s go. He’s got the weed. Let’s go.’ Because some fan gave it to us, right? You had this f**king tinfoil of weed, and just knocking on your door, and you’re like, ‘What?’ You were tired. And it was like, ‘Do you have that weed?’ . . . So you opened the door fully, looked at me and this young fighter and were like, ‘Come on in.’ And we all smoked pot in this hotel room in wherever it was. think Montreal, actually, and it was just a fun time, and then seeing this guy move on to become the baddest motherf**ker on the planet. We also had a conversation with him about I was wanting him to go to a different camp,” Rogan said on The Joe Rogan Experience. “I was like, ‘You’re too good. You should be in a real camp.’ He was like, ‘You really think so?’ I was like, ‘I know so.’ I go, ‘You only have a certain amount of time in this thing. Your time should be invested with a real coach who’s going to hone your skills. You could be an all-time great, man.’ I remember telling him that. He was like, ‘You really think so?’ I go, ‘I know so. You’ve really got to move on.’”
If Rogan’s story is accurate about Jones having just fought four times when they met, it means they would’ve met a few months before Jones signed with the UFC.
Rogan believes that Jones is so good as an MMA fighter that he would’ve been a world champion, no matter where the fighter trained at.
“He was so good, who knows how far – he might have been a world champion even with the camp that he was in. He was so good, and his wrestling is so powerful and he’s so physically talented, but it made a big difference, him to go to Jackson’s and be able to train on a regular basis with world-class fighters,” says Rogan.
UFC 232 takes place on Saturday, December 29 from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada with Jon Jones and Alexander Gustafsson headlining. Fightful is providing live coverage of the event, with a post-show podcast to follow.
