Martin Rogers

USA TODAY Sports

ALBUQUERQUE – Jon Jones has feelings of guilt, emotions that bite sharper with a clear head and no mind-swaying substance to blunt them. The toughest and most credentialed fighter in the most unforgiving sports organization of all, the Ultimate Fighting Championship, knows he inflicted damage on friends and loved ones that had nothing to do with elbows and kicks.

His regrets involving his fiancée, Jessie Moses, who “put up with my (expletive),” he says, for seven years and now says she is glad to have the man she fell for in high school back again.

Then there were the young fighters who would make the pilgrimage to Albuquerque for training, gravitate toward charismatic Jones and then fall into his partying ways and see their careers stall. Jones admits he is guilty of encouraging such loose habits and says he is ashamed of it.

Because, you see, Jones has not just been a mixed martial arts phenomenon these last few years.

He also has been a pothead, a stoner, a weed fiend, a burner or any other word you can think of to describe someone with a dedicated interest in the consumption of marijuana.

Or maybe Jones was an addict, all while climbing to and staying at the very top of his sport.

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Jones was unstoppable inside the octagon, but away from it he was under the control of marijuana.

“I was a drug addict,” Jones says as lunch arrives at an Albuquerque restaurant midway through the course of a day spent with USA TODAY Sports in late March, a month out from his UFC 197 headline bout with Ovince Saint Preux in Las Vegas on Saturday.

“One thing people don’t realize is that you can be a drug addict even if you are a stoner. If you are waking up every day and smoking, smoking before you eat, smoking before you train, smoke before you sleep, smoking before you watch a movie, smoking before your study session, you are an addict. It doesn’t have to be a hard drug to be an addict.

“If you’re spending lots of money on it and all your friends are people who do it as well and you don’t really associate with people who are completely sober, then, yeah, you are an addict. I think that’s why people have these issues with marijuana, because they don’t really consider it a drug.”

Kicking the habit

Jones says he has kicked the habit, and it proved harder to kick than the pads and heavy bags that occupy the Jackson Wink MMA Academy in Albuquerque where he and a stable of elite fighters hone their craft.

Smoking pot had been part of Jones’ life since high school, through his college wrestling career and his entire life in the MMA ranks.

“It was literally what I would do in between fights,” Jones said. “I was just sitting, enjoying life and thinking that I was a hippie. I didn’t feel I was hurting anyone else, didn’t feel I was being a bad person.

“It became who I enjoyed being. I thought I was preserving myself from all the negatives and evil of the world. I would pop out of my cave for fights.”

Jones has an earnest tone and way about him, not afraid to give honest appraisals of himself, even when they are not flattering.

When he talks about how he wants to help and inspire others to emerge from a troubled path, he does not try to gloss over his mistakes. “Too many,” he says.

In May 2012, Jones was caught driving under the influence after plowing his car into a pole. Before UFC 182 in early 2015, Jones failed a cocaine test but was allowed to fight Daniel Cormier, whom he defeated.

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In April 2015, he was involved in a hit-and-run incident in Albuquerque. He pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and was sentenced to 18 months’ supervised probation. The indiscretion cost him his UFC light heavyweight title, with the company’s chiefs stripping away the belt on policy grounds. Jones will avoid a felony charge on his record if he completes an extensive program involving charitable and community works.

Yet here is the puzzling thing about Jones that is at once confounding and unavoidably impressive: Despite all the mayhem, all that weed and all those late nights, he has staved off the curse that has afflicted all UFC greats.

MMA is a sport of such unpredictability and inherent danger that it feels like every fight should be listed as even by bookies. On every recent occasion that a superstar has emerged on the back of a marketing juggernaut and begun to appear invincible, that cloak has been brutally, and often bloodily, ripped away.

Ronda Rousey fell afoul of it in Australia in November. Then, on the last occasion the organization took a pay-per-view to its spiritual home of Las Vegas, Conor McGregor’s wild ascent to celebrity status was cut off by Nate Diaz. Jones’ training partner Holly Holm, Rousey’s conqueror, lost her newly acquired title to Miesha Tate the same night.

Jones, at least so far, has trodden a unique path. He made his MMA debut in 2008 at 20, winning six fights in three months on smaller shows before being snapped up by the UFC.

Since then he has fought 16 times, the sole blemish being a disqualification for illegal use of the elbows while dominating Matt Hamill in 2009.

He is at the top of the pound-for-pound list, despite not having fought since beating Cormier by unanimous decision. Cormier captured the belt when Jones was stripped of it for the hit-and-run incident but was forced to pull out of their scheduled main-event contest Saturday after suffering an injury in training.

His replacement, Saint Preux, is ranked No. 6 at light heavyweight and is a big underdog, despite sniping from Cormier and others that Jones is overconfident and ripe for an upset.

While the odds­makers have been so often wrong, they are supremely confident this time. A dollar wagered on Jones in one of Las Vegas’ casinos would realize a mere 14 cents profit.

Body and mind

Prime-time experience is among Jones’ advantages, but the 28-year-old also fully accepts his good genetic fortune. He was walking around at 220 pounds five weeks out from fight night and will have sculpted himself to 205 by weigh-in. He is an athlete in every sense of the word, with a pair of brothers, Arthur and Chandler, plying their trade in the NFL.

“Because of (my brothers), you can’t question whether I’m a (natural) athlete,” Jones said. “Despite being a bit of a knucklehead, I have a great mind for this game. Even though I have bad qualities in my personal life, as an athlete I can turn it on.

“I will get out there and train harder than anyone, five times a day sometimes. You have to be a special person to do that — like special forces, military maybe. You find a way to get to practice and do it one more time.”

Then there is the mental side of Jones. Athletes, fighters in particular, have personal formulas of intellectual deception they play on themselves to extract maximum performance.

Jones’ protective cushion has been the feeling he is blessed, chosen by a higher power. He accepts that to many such talk would seem arrogant or absurd, given his choice of profession involves the infliction of pain.

“You can call me crazy and it might make me sound narcissistic, but that’s what my psychology is,” Jones said. “(Me and my opponent), we are in my story.”

That story met another roadblock last month. An exchange between Jones and a police officer who pulled him over for drag racing ended up on the Internet. Jones was heard calling the officer a “pig” but has continued to insist the officer harassed him.

Jones’ probation conditions have been amended to include a provision that he must seek permission from his probation officer before driving. He has since employed a full-time driver.

Greg Jackson, one of the cornerstones of Jones’ coaching team, has spoken of the necessity for the fighter to find the right balance in his life, though he is adamant his charge has made positive strides.

For now, Jones’ focus, by necessity, has to be on the fight with Saint Preux.

“Jon’s a beast,” Holm said before an afternoon run in the punishing hills above Albuquerque, where long-distance athletes from around the world come to starve their lungs of oxygen and build cardio strength. “He can do things no one else can.”

Watching him run, you can tell Jones is a pure athlete, albeit one who only recently embraced pure living. Associates in the sports business have told him he could be on the same endorsement level as stars of the NFL and NBA if not for his indiscretions. He could have been an ad man’s dream but instead lost deals with Reebok and Nike.

Jones has an undeniable presence, and if his words of redemption are actually the kind of bluster that so familiarly flow from the mouths of fighters, then he is a heck of an actor. During the day, he regularly intersperses his remarks with the admission that his positive comments will blow up in his face if he messes up again.

At one point Jones stops and reflects. “Man, we talked a lot about weed,” he says, seeming to briefly ponder the possibility that he said too much, before shaking his head.

“I feel like I am having a come-to-Jesus moment right now,” he adds. “This is real stuff, and I feel so free talking about it now. A rough beginning doesn’t have to mean there is a rough end. I’m ready to be the best me I can be.”

Given how good he has been already, that could be a scary thought.