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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
Jon Jones has changed his story regarding some homophobic comments made towards a Swedish teenager on Instagram via his own account. While it was posited by his manager that he didn't make the statements and that his phone had been lost, Jones now says it was an individual at the PR firm he uses to increase his social media presence who made the statements.
"At the time, the whole situation looked sticky because Malki was saying I lost my phone, which I did, but it had nothing to do with this whole situation," Jones said in an interview in New York on Monday (via Newsday.com). "It's one of those things that the people who have decided to hate me will never believe me about it."
"One of the guys that's working for us took it into his own hands to reply to the fans some negative stuff. I don't know if the dude thought he was logged in under his name or if he knew he was logged in under my name. By the time I found out all that stuff had happened, it had been on the Internet for hours."
Jones' argument now is that he'd have had no reason to come back on the comments made by @DanielJavid, saying he's heard much, much worse, and that wasn't worth a response.
"What the guy actually said to me wasn't even worth coming back at him," Jones said. "I've been called a [expletive] before on social media. I had one guy say my kids deserve to be molested on social media. I've had guys insult me for having a white fiancee and threatened my family's life. So I've dealt with some real social media [expletive]. I've had real-life stuff happen to me, so for somebody to say I lost to Gustafsson isn't even worth getting my attention."
Penick's Analysis: Jones conveniently doesn't give any information on the supposed PR firm working on his social media account, so getting any meaningful follow up is a longshot. That said, this is fairly ridiculous, and brings even more scrutiny than it did before. The "I got hacked" excuse already didn't make a ton of sense, and this is even more on the implausible excuse front. Would it be possible for it to have gone down as Jones argues here? Sure. Doesn't make it all that believable on its face. That said, the comments that brought about the supposed Jones response absolutely weren't deserving of what was brought back, but we've also seen Jones make petty comments towards people in the past, and he doesn't seem above it.
[Jon Jones art by Grant Gould (c) MMATorch.com]
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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