American Kickboxing Academy (AKA) head coach Javier Mendez recently named former lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov, who retired undefeated at 29-0 with 19 finishes, as the greatest UFC fighter of all time.
Former two-division champion, Jon Jones, has more than a dozen world titles that suggest otherwise. Unfortunately, he also has multiple drug testing violations that cast a long shadow over his accolades.
“The GOAT for me is Khabib, and I would put Jon Jones in that category, but I can’t,” Mendez told The Ahmad Mahmood Show. “If you’re caught doing something you shouldn’t have been doing, how can you be considered at the top of the league? This is a true sport, and in a true sport you cannot put that person ahead. How many people have won Olympic gold medals and then they find out they cheated and got the medals taken away from them?”
Not surprisingly, AKA mainstay and former UFC double-champ Daniel Cormier backs Mendez. But Jones also has his supporters, including UFC CEO Dana White and former light heavyweight opponent Chael Sonnen.
“I don’t know that Jon ever took anything that the rest of them didn’t take, but he got caught for it,” Sonnen said on his YouTube channel. “I’m going to have to go with no, Jon Jones failing a PED test makes him not the cleanest fighter of all time, (but) it does not disqualify him from being the greatest fighter of all time.”
Either way, Ian Garry plans on ending this argument after defeating Islam Makhachev later this year.
