At least they’ve got Frankie Edgar waiting in the wings this time around.
Fight fans around the world were left devastated when Jose Aldo pulled out of his scheduled bout with Conor McGregor at UFC 189 with a rib injury. The MMA community was denied arguably the most highly anticipated featherweight title fight of all time after the long-standing champion fractured a rib during a sparring session.
Reports from inside Aldo’s camp revealed the Brazilian had been doing insane sparring sessions and had over 30 sparring partners, most of whom were high level strikers.
The damage was done to Aldo’s rib when he was sparring with Alcides Nunes, a round after he sparred with Dutch Kickboxing champ Andy Souwer. Nunes slipped while throwing a kick to the champ’s midsection, thus ruling Aldo out of the biggest payday of his career.
Luckily, McGregor brutally knocked out Chad Mendes to claim the interim strap and his fight with Aldo has been rescheduled for UFC 194 on December 12.
However, despite his intense camp for UFC 189 contributing to an, admittedly, unlucky injury, his coach Andre Pederneiras revealed that he hasn’t really changed his camp at all for Aldo v McGregor: take two, so MMA Fighting reports.
“We had already studied him a lot for the first fight. The injury happened two or three weeks before the fight, and we were ready for the fight, but unfortunately he broke his rib. We are doing what we were doing before. It’s the same thing, except for some few details.”
Although his comments are a bit vague, they don’t really fill us with confidence that Aldo is doing all he can to remain injury-free for the bout.
