With Ronda Rousey mia, Conor McGregor on a sabbatical UFC is lacking in starpower. And to make matters worse the one star who riled up much of the community got pinged for doping for the 2nd time and it’s looking like it might be accidental too. Still Jeff Novitsky clarified this likely isn’t the end of Jon Jones.

 “I don’t necessarily think that we put up a four-year sanction for a second-term offense when the first-term offense was shown that that person didn’t cheat intentionally – just operated with careless disregard,” UFC VP of Athlete Health and Performance Jeff Novitzky said.

Novitzky appeared today on the “Joe Rogan Experience” and discussed the publicly known details of Jones’ case, which stems from a positive in-competition test for the st*roid oral turinabol following his third-round knockout of Daniel Cormier.

 “It would not make a lot of sense for an individual, a UFC athlete, especially a championship contender like Jon Jones who knew, ‘I’m tested quite regularly in this program’ – it would not make a lot of sense that that would be your drug of choice if you’re trying to cheat,” Novitzky said. “I think it’s come out after the fact that USADA did another test on Jon a month or two months after his positive test, and he was negative. So that would be indicative that the prohibited substance entered his system sometime after July 7th or 8th, and that was likely a pretty small amount and that cleared his system pretty quickly.

“Again, who knows where it plays out? But on the surface of things, at this point in the game with that type of information out there, it wouldn’t indicate intentional use. That could be wrong. I don’t know that definitively, and we’ll see how this plays out.”

Reinstated champ Cormier will defend the belt at UFC 220 against Volkan Oezdemir (15-1 MMA, 3-0 UFC).