Did Jon Jones actually earn more than his brother in the NFL? - The Fine Art of Violence
Court documents allow us to fact check a decade old claim.
Hey all, have you noticed that a new UFC Disinformation Campaign has kicked into high gear? It was was a two pronged attack, the first of which was familiar to long time fans.
Dana White went on a podcast with Vivek Ramaswamy, someone who knows (cares) very little about mixed martial arts. He did his thing where he shouts cherry picked instances where a fighter makes so much money that they don’t even need a second job.
Ramaswamy, having done zero research beforehand has no ability to push back or ask follow up questions and White’s quotes found their way into the MMA news cycle. UFC fans of a certain ilk will adapt these convenient proclamations as gospel and repeat them on Twitter.
The second half of this pincer attack was downright crafty. Brendan Schaub went on Joe Rogan’s podcast to talk about the class action lawsuit. It’s a brilliant gambit because you have Schaub, a man whose credibility and intelligence have been mocked across the internet for years, explaining a class action lawsuit to the most willfully ignorant yet influential figure in broadcast media.
My colleagues John Nash and Stephie Haynes did a great breakdown on the Hey Not The Face podcast, of Rogan and Schaub’s flawed attempt to verbalize what Nash has been reporting for years.
All this great reporting had me thinking back to the glory days of unsubstantiated claims and one particular boast has always been a thorn in my side. You may recall that Jon Jones has two brothers, Arthur and Chandler, who played in the NFL. On September 23rd, 2013, Jon Jones’ brother Arthur Jones tweeted that Jon made more money than both Arthur and Chandler combined. I was stunned at the time, but such claims were unverifiable. Now that court documents have uncovered real UFC payouts we can do a proper comparison so let’s dive in:
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