Jose Aldo out to remind fans of his greatness
LAS VEGAS – Jose Aldo’s practices would routinely be harder than his fights. His sparring partners would go as hard as they could against him, frequently inflicting real pain.
Every minute, they switched and a new, fresh man would enter. Aldo would take knocks from each of them, some of which were significant enough to force him from fights, but nearly always Aldo would be the one doling out the most damage.
This became his regimen, and though it made modern coaches cringe, it so obviously worked there was no reason to change. He decimated a series of elite challengers to the point that he put himself at the pinnacle of the sport alongside legends like Anderson Silva, Fedor Emelianenko, Georges St-Pierre and Jon Jones.
He’s accomplished so much, yet remains such a mystery to so many. There are many mixed martial arts experts who would say Aldo is the greatest active fighter in the world, yet he’s hardly a beloved or widely known figure.
Nobody has done more to raise Aldo’s profile than Conor McGregor, the man who will challenge him for the featherweight title on Saturday in the heavily hyped main event of UFC 194 at the MGM Grand Garden.
Pre-sales of the pay-per-view for the fight are trending ahead of those for UFC 193, which wound up as the second-best selling show in company history.
Yet, the question UFC president Dana White gets almost as often as “Is McGregor really that crazy?” is, “Is Aldo healthy?”
Aldo hasn’t gotten a national stage the way McGregor or former women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey has, and he hasn’t even approached the popularity of Silva, his countryman, when he was in his run as the UFC’s middleweight champion.
Silva went on a remarkable run after being disqualified in a fight against Yushin Okami in 2006. His winning streak began on April 22, 2006, in London, when he successfully defended the Cage Rage middleweight title with a first-round knockout of Tony Fryklund.
Silva joined the UFC two months later and grew to iconic status. He won 16 fights in a row, including 11 middleweight title bouts, before being beaten by Chris Weidman at UFC 162 on July 6, 2013.
Aldo’s run, at least on paper, is more impressive. Aldo is 25-1 and hasn’t lost since Nov. 26, 2005, when he was choked out in a lightweight bout at Jungle Fight 5 by Luciano Azevedo.
He returned to featherweight in his next bout and has run the table since. He’s won 18 in a row, nine by finish, and is 10-0 in title fights.
He’s largely been unchallenged in that time, with only ex-lightweight champion Frankie Edgar and Chad Mendes in a rematch really giving Aldo a serious run.
Yet, there is no one Aldo fight or singular moment that stands out in a fan’s mind. Rather, it’s the series of injuries he’s suffered that have forced him to pull out of fights for which he’s most known. On five occasions in the UFC, Aldo has pulled out of UFC bouts with injuries: against Erik Koch twice, and against Josh Grispi, Mendes and McGregor.
He’s 7-0 in the UFC, but more fans know him for the five bouts he pulled out of than for the seven victories he’s scored.
McGregor, of course, has used this to his advantage in the build-up to Saturday’s bout. They were supposed to fight at UFC 189, but Aldo withdrew because of a rib injury.
A controversy surfaced over the severity of the injury and whether Aldo should have fought despite it. It was widely reported as a broken rib, though Dr. Jeff Davidson of the UFC said it was an injury to the costochondral junction.
In essence, Davidson said an old injury had calcified and the injury shown on the X-rays in June that led Aldo to pull out of the fight may have been damage to the calcified cartilage in the area.
McGregor was irate, because he was planning to fight with a major knee injury. He was injured grappling with Rory MacDonald while they were in the midst of a press tour to promote the double main event of UFC 189.
McGregor didn’t talk about it prior to the fight, other than to rip Aldo for pulling out. After he beat Mendes (who replaced Aldo on the UFC 189 card) to win the interim title, he said the ACL in the knee was 80 percent torn and that he fought anyway.
“I’ll tell you why [I went ahead with the fight], because I’m a beast,” McGregor said. “Nothing can break me. Nothing can stop this train from taking over this game, absolutely nothing. I had a busted up leg and they knew I had a busted up leg and they planned to target it. They celebrated that, because it happened on the world tour. They knew it. [His] whole camp knew it, and they celebrated it and plotted a way to attack it.
“You know what I mean? He busted [or] he bruised his rib and pulled out of the fight, and I still told him when he bruised his rib, I said show up, and I won’t target your body. I said that to him. I said, ‘If you show up here, I won’t hit you once to the body. I’ll hit you clean in the face.’ And he still didn’t show up, so I showed up because nothing can break me, no amount of adversity I cannot conquer.”
Aldo should have nothing to be ashamed of for choosing not to fight with a rib injury. It’s difficult to sleep with an injured rib, let alone fight an elite opponent and face getting kicked, punched and kneed in the area.
Aldo’s problem is one of public relations. He simply doesn’t care to promote himself or his story. He’s dour and disinterested during most interviews and rarely says anything of note.
A wise publicist would have been able to spin the injury, but Aldo just let the torrent of criticism flow with little response.
The result is that he’s a slight underdog for the first time, and his reputation as a wrecking machine is on hold.
He needs this fight more than McGregor because he’s never really broken out. He’s making a massive purse largely because of McGregor.
And during a conference call, he was asked multiple times if he could guarantee he’d show.
It seemed a silly exercise, because he couldn’t possibly know if he’d break his leg the next day, but Aldo went through with it.
“That’s for certain,” Aldo said when asked to assure fans he’ll make it to the opening bell on Saturday against McGregor. “I will be there. That’s more certain than all of our bets in the future, and I will be there and I will win, as usual.”
It’s only a few days away now, and Aldo is in Las Vegas, healthy and apparently ready to fight.
White’s doing his best to stoke the rivalry, noting that Aldo hates McGregor.
“You know, for Conor, this is just another day at the office,” White told Yahoo Sports. “It’s how he does business, how he earns a living. But it’s personal to Jose. He absolutely despises Conor. I mean, he hates him. And I know he really wants this fight.”
He’s going to, it seems, make it to the post.
That’s always been his best way to remind people of his greatness.
