Jose Aldo got very TKO’d by Petr Yan at UFC 251 for the vacant bantamweight belt. It pushed his losing streak to three. Aldo went into the fight vs. Conor McGregor with a 25-1 record. He’s now 3-6 his last 9 fights.
Referee Leon Roberts received widespread criticism for allowing the fight to go on as long as it did, but Aldo, for one, wouldn’t have it any other way, as the explained to Guilherme Cruz for MMA Fighting.
The referee was great, man – excellent work by the referee, said Aldo. It’s hard to think about stopping a title fight. If he stopped it early, everyone would talk about it. I wasn’t out at any moment. I went down and was trying to recover. Everyone who gets in there, or those who have been knocked down before, knows how the body reacts. You get slower, that’s a fact. Fighters who say it should have been stopped earlier are just kidding themselves. You get slower, you try to move, but it’s completely different.”
Getting punched once or twice more won’t make any difference in your life. You’re willing to do it. What if the referee doesn’t stop it there, I recover and land a good one that knocks him out? Every referee goes to our locker room before the fight to go over the rules, and I always tell them to not stop the fight, only if I have no reaction. As long as I’m fighting, let me in there. It’s part of the sport.
Aldo was happy with the ref, and he was happy with his performance, too.
Pretty much everything worked out, he said. Everything we thought would happen in the fight happened. It was a very tough fight. We were basically tied going into the fifth round, but the main factors in the fight were a kick that landed on him and his punch that got me in the first and affected me.”
When I came back to the fourth, I don’t know why I changed my strategy again. I should have kept it, controlling the distance, but it’s his merit for imposing his rhythm, coming forward and controlling until the fifth.”
I’m an athlete. I’m a fighter. This is what I’ve chosen for my life. As long as I have this hunger to train and learn, to get out of my comfort zone, brother, I want to fight. That’s the goal. I’ll get back to training, do what ‘Dede’ and I are planning, and ask Dana for a fight.
This new generation keeps picking fights, but I train to fight anyone. If you want to be a champion you have to fight the champion, or the worst guy in the division, it doesn’t matter. If you want to be the champion, you have to fight everyone.
UG, who do you want to see Aldo fight next?
And as an aside, if you are English speaking and interested in the MMA scene in Brazil, and Brazilian fighters, Cruz is in a class by himself.
