FORMER UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones is eligible to return to competition by late October after completing a 15-month suspension for a doping violation.

The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) on Wednesday announced the length of Jones’ ban for his second violation of the UFC’s anti-doping policy. He has been suspended since testing positive for a steroid metabolite last summer, and the ban will conclude Oct. 28 — 15 months after the collection of the positive sample.

The decision by an arbitrator means the 31-year-old Jones could even fight at UFC 230 in New York on Nov. 3, if the mixed martial arts promotion decides to book his comeback bout on that card.

Jones could have been suspended for four years for a second failed test, but arbitrator Richard H. McLaren determined the ban’s length by evaluating Jones’ degree of fault. Jones claimed he didn’t knowingly take any banned substances, and he passed several out-of-competition drug tests leading up to his failed in-competition test, one day before UFC 214 in Anaheim, California.

California State Athletic Commission executive officer Andy Foster said his group is “agreeable, in concept” to the 15-month suspension, but added that Jones still must pay a US$205,000 fine.

The relative leniency of the suspension — and the fact that it ends one week before UFC 230, which currently has no main event for Madison Square Garden — attracted bemusement from some of his fellow fighters on Twitter.

Lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov used an expletive to refer to USADA while complaining its decision includes too “much politics.”

Heavyweight Curtis Blaydes also weighed in: “No shade to JJ but no one is surprised by this arbitrary decision. USADA is steadily losing respect in the fight community to the point of questioning why they even exist.”(SD-Agencies)