UFC star Jon Jones made headlines this week when a video went viral showing him confronting vandals, and he’s now speaking out to urge other Americans to step up and protect their communities as well.
During an interview on “Fox & Friends” with host Ainsley Earhardt, Jones explained that he had planned to attend a peaceful protest in Albuquerque, New Mexico on Sunday after a friend called him and said that it was mostly just caucasians and hispanics in community. Jones decided to go so he could represent the black community, but he quickly discovered that what had been a peaceful protest devolved into violence when the sun went down.
“And, when I get down there, the peaceful protest is over and a lot of people are just hanging around still and the vandalism started right away,” he recounted. “And, I just noticed the protesters that were leaving and going home – that no one was standing [up] for anything. No one was speaking out. Everyone was just kind of scared of like these hooligans taking over the town.”
Jones went on to say that he’d “never seen anything like it,” adding that there were no police to be seen and residents were “just doing whatever they wanted to places I liked to hang out at.”
The more the UFC star stood there saying nothing, the more he felt like a “coward,” so he took action.
“So, I just started to talk to people and just say, ‘Hey, it’s not the way, man. It’s not the way.’ [I] just kind of realized how much danger I was in by approaching all of these masked people asking them not to do certain things,” Jones explained. “Finally, I had enough and I just started taking things from people, and a teammate ended up recording the situation and I guess it went viral.”
In the video, Jones can be seen confronting two people holding spray cans, and he eventually got them both to hand over the cans that they had planned to use to vandalize a building in the area.
“At the end of the day, you know, these are our relatives that are out there acting like terrorists,” he said on Fox, adding that he has since come together with his friends to form a “little local nonviolent police force” ensuring that his hometown will make it through this.
“At the end of the day, [there are] a lot more of us citizens than there are police and the question is what type of person are you going to be? What type of man are you going to be in this historic time when your country needs you, your community needs you…to step up, to say the right thing, to be courageous when you see people doing wrong?” Jones concluded. “I’m not asking you guys as citizens to put yourselves in danger, but I am asking to use your voices, use your eyes, and be smart [during] this time. Do what you can.”
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