Brian Stann: Jon Jones is lucky
Brian Stann: “No, we can’t sugarcoat this. The fact of the matter is he’s lucky. He’s very lucky … Somebody could have died, and that’s an unfixable mistake.”
Television commentator Brian Stann was a Jackson/Winklejohn MMA teammate of Jon Jones for years. When Jon Jones’ life collapsed into felony, Stann was not shocked.
I’d love to be able to say I was shocked, but I was not, said Stann on UFC Tonight, as transcribed by Tristen Critchfield for Sherdog. I’d say a 4 or a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10. I think that just has more to do with details surrounding it, and how it went down.
I was there the first day he set foot in the gym. And from Day 1, people knew there was something unique about him. Immediately he was a guy who had a lot more to lose than everybody around him, and the leeches and the people came out that wanted to take something from him early on. So he has dealt with a lot of temptation. No, we can’t sugarcoat this. The fact of the matter is he’s lucky. He’s very lucky. This is the second time he’d been involved in an automobile accident where he was not the only one involved. And a broken arm is a minor injury. Somebody could have died, and that’s an unfixable mistake.
Specifically what I’d like to see from him is, I’d like to see him think more. I’d like for him to stop for a second and think about the consequences of his actions. And not only the consequences for himself, but all the people around him in his family that care about him, that love him. Not necessarily all the fans and everything else. Look, he’s a professional fighter. We can’t expect him to be perfect, and he’s got to start thinking about what he does and how he lives his life and how it affects other people.
I think this latest punishment hit him hard where it hurts. It hit his wallet, it hit his legacy and it took away a belt that he earned. These are things that he cherished. You gotta hope that he’s feeling remorse right now, that he’s not feeling sorry for himself. That he genuinely feels bad about what he’s done and realizes what he’s done is wrong. That’s what I hope we see from him in the future.
It’s interesting because I’d be a liar if I didn’t say that during my time training with Jon, that I didn’t witness him be kind and caring and a person with character – and not do these types of things. I remember when he had the loss to Matt Hamill and it was a simple rule break that he wasn’t fully understanding of – he handled that with class, and he handled that with character. I remember that Jon.
If you’re a person that cares about Jon and has seen the possibilities and the snowball effect of some of his extracurricular activities and maybe saw this coming at some point, I think you are happy with punishment. This is the only way for him to really realize that there’s a problem and that something needs to be fixed. I don’t necessarily think I saw that after the cocaine incident or after the DWI. I don’t know if that was really there for him. This is massive embarrassment. This is a lot of money he has lost. And he’s lost his right to work right now. He can’t go make money indefinitely.
If you’re a person that cares about Jon, I think you wanted something to happen that was so bold and such a statement that it will cause him to re-evaulate how he lives his life and make the appropriate changes.
