Mixed martial artist Jon Jones defeated fighter Ciryl Gane at 2 minutes, 4 seconds of the first round on March 4, in the main event of the Ultimate Fighting Championship 285 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Jones is now the UFC heavyweight champion after owning the light heavyweight division for years.

The win has sparked the debate as to if Jones is the greatest MMA fighter in history.

There are other contenders for the GOAT title, such as Demetrious Johnson, Anderson Silva, Georges St-Pierre, Jose Aldo, and Fedor Emelianenko. But Jones, with his latest win, is now a two-division UFC champion with one of the greatest resumes in the history of the sport, TMZ reported.

“I’ve been working for this for a long time,” Jones said in his postfight interview, ESPN reported. “A lot of people thought I wasn’t coming back. I’ve been faithful to my goal. I’ve been faithful to the mission. There were days I didn’t want to train, and I was always there.”

Jones, whose record is 27-1-1, first won UFC gold in March 2011 when he claimed the light heavyweight title with a stoppage win over Brazilian legend Mauricio “Shogun” Rua. He was 23 at the time. Jones later won 13 title fights in the light heavyweight division.

Even with the wins, Jones faced obstacles. Before fighting Gane, he hadn’t fought in three years, he was now 35 years old, and he was moving up in weight class to heavyweight.

Jones is now a two-division UFC champion with one of the greatest resumes in the sport, TMZ reported.

But Jones’ MMA legacy is complicated and littered with personal troubles. On Nov. 24, 2011, Jones was taken into custody in the parking lot of a strip club in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for driving on a suspended license. Charges were later dropped. Then on May 19, 2012, Jones had a car accident and wrapped his Bentley around a utility pole in Binghamton, New York. After refusing a sobriety test, he was taken into custody by police. Jones later pleaded guilty to DUI and was fined $1,000, and had his license suspended for six months.

Fast forward to April 14, 2014, and Jones is accused of writing homophobic slurs to a Swedish fan on Instagram; Jones says his phone was stolen and his account was hacked. On Aug. 4, 2014, Jones and Daniel Cormier were promoting their scheduled title fight in Las Vegas when they got into a fight. Jones was fined $50,000 by the Nevada State Athletic Commission for the fight, and he also had to do 40 hours of community service.

Things took another turn for worse on Jan. 6, 2015, when the Nevada State Athletic Commission revealed that Jones had tested positive for the main metabolite in cocaine before the Cormier fight. Jon Jones checked into a rehab facility. The UFC fined Jones $25,000 for violating its Athlete Code of Conduct policy for the failed drug test.

“I’m not a cocaine addict by any means or even a frequent user. I just made a really dumb decision and got caught,” Jon Jones told Fox Sports.

On April 27, 2015, Jones was involved in a hit-and-run in Albuquerque that injured the pregnant woman driving the other vehicle. Jones fled the scene but later turned himself in to the police. He later pleads guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident involving injury. He is sentenced to 18 months of supervised probation, ESPN reported.

Over the course of his career, he has been suspended and stripped of his belt multiple times for the use of banned substances, The Athletic reported.

Jon Jones celebrates his victory over Ciryl Gane as he walks from the octagon after the UFC 285 mixed martial arts heavyweight title bout March 4, 2023, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/David Becker)