We’ve not heard much from UFC featherweight champion Jose Aldo since a rib injury forced him out of the main event of UFC 189.
A press release here, a tweet there but other than that it’s all been hush hush in the Aldo camp.
But the 145lbs kingpin has finally spoken at length about Saturday night and reveals that he didn’t actually watch when Conor McGregor secured the interim featherweight championship with his second round TKO of Chad Mendes.
“It’s funny. When my friends aren’t fighting, I don’t even watch it,” Aldo said today. “Dede (Andre Pederneiras) talked to me about it, said it’s cool, that it was a good fight for us. He saw his game, that Chad was winning while he had gas, and that they shouldn’t have stopped the fight. But when I’m not fighting, I don’t read or watch anything.”
Aldo was joined by head coach Pederneiras at Nova Uniao for a press conference today and said that, from what he heard “Mendes won the battle, but McGregor won the fight.”
“We considered fighting (McGregor) injured,” Aldo said. “I like those big events, and I was training well. We asked for a deadline to try to recover and fight injured, but I wasn’t recovering as expected. I still feel the pain. I would have fought if I could… but I couldn’t.
“I was upset with this injury. This was one of the biggest fights in history and we had all the promotion, everything that was needed. I’ve never been through something like this, especially for a fight that everybody wanted to see. This fight would bring a lot of money.”
Nova Uniao head coach Andre Pederneiras confirmed the schedule for Aldo’s return to training and confirmed that it will be a unification bout next rather than a McGregor v Edgar fight.
“Aldo wants to get back to training in two weeks,” Pederneiras said. “I don’t believe Frankie Edgar will fight Conor first. Aldo will be cleared to fight before the end of the year, in November or December. That’s what I think, but I’m not a doctor. We can’t rush anything. He will come back when doctors tell him he’s cleared and there’s no risk of getting injured again.”
The UFC are unlikely to stage Aldo v McGregor at UFC Dublin on October 24th just due to the fact that the bout would draw in much more money in a bigger venue in the states, with reports this morning that the AT&T Stadium in Texas being looked at, but the Brazilian has claimed that he’s game for a fight on enemy territory.
“It would be great (to fight in Ireland), I don’t see any problem with that,” Aldo said. “They can say whatever they want. If they don’t say it in Portuguese, I won’t understand a word so I don’t care. I’m anxious to fight already.”
“Get ready, I’m coming,” Aldo added. “He (McGregor) can say whatever he wants, but his weapons are nowhere near what I’m showing him.”
Quotes via Guilherme Cruz of MMAFighting.com
