After years playing the role of misunderstood 20 year old trying to find his identity, Jon Jones has finally broken the number one rule of acting and gone "full retard"! The question at hand however, is whether we're finally seeing the Jon Jones persona unravel, or observing the greatest troll to grace the octagon since Anderson Silva. I for one was leaning toward the latter, until his recent exchange with Daniel Cormier when he thought no one was looking. His reaction when they told him he was on air, combined with his soft spoken demeanor on FS1 makes me think we should all give Jon Jones a break.

Now before you burn me at the stake, hear me out. Jon is a middle child among his two brothers, and probably spent the majority of his coming up as the smaller of the 2. Combine that with the fact that he opted for wrestling where his brothers went for football, a degree of not fitting in probably colored a good portion of his home life. If I were to guess, I'd say Jon probably got picked on a lot; being a youngest myself, and the smaller brother, I can attest to some of the aftermath of spending years being overpowered, and excluded. You start to develop this sort of complex between being the "good person" your parents raised you to be, and the cold, calculating, manipulative person you become to survive. When you're in a situation where you can't physically defend yourself, you are faced with only a few options, to be more crafty than your opponent, and most of all, be prepared to go places they aren't. Hence the eye pokes, knee kicks, shoulder cranks, and general disregard for "honor in tactics". These behaviors are a result of being forced into a corner, and learning the only way you can win is to go around the rules since your physical limitations preclude you from fair competition.

Now, obviously those limitations are no longer a factor, as he has developed into a massive lhw, but I'm not convinced his internal reality has caught up with the external one. I think this is why we see him oscillate from soft spoken and seemingly timid to this bizarre combination of "I'm just having fun but I'm a totally awkward jerk about it". What we saw in a moment of candidness where he and DC had no pretensions of being watched, was a rare look at the little brother who has learned to poke the bear.

When I look at Jons behavior over the years, and the viciousness he displays in the octagon, I genuinely believe we're seeing the product of years being picked on and living in the shadow of his brothers. His confidence seems forced because it is a defense mechanism more than a reality. His persona seems fake because deep down he's wrestling with conflicting identities; the one where he's still a kid who can't adequately protect himself, and one where he's the baddest man on the planet who can smash anyone he wants. I think he is also wrestling with the fact that he's one of those kids that should have grown up to be an evil mastermind, but by some random act of grace became wildly successful as a fighter instead. Now faced with the reality that he no longer needs to exact his revenge on mankind he is having a genuine identity crisis.

All this makes me think we should give Jon a break. While he brought most of the fans ire on himself, I think we should take a quick look in the mirror and ask if we would have done much better given the same set of circumstances. Granted his personality is tough to deal with at times, but if we consider how he got there, I think we can all relate to some degree.

So, I put the question to you. Is Jon Jones the dude playing the dude disguised as another dude and trolling us all, or just a little brother trying to outgrow his own shadow?