UFC 142 Results: What's Next for Jose Aldo?

While many fans and critics thought that Chad Mendes and his stellar wrestling game were going to be enough to dispatch featherweight champion Jose Aldo, the champ proved everyone wrong almost immediately.

Aldo put on a fighting clinic, stuffing all of Mendes’ takedown attempts and throwing one of the most vicious knees we’ve ever seen to finish the fight, and followed up his brilliant performance with a trip into the crowd that stirred the Brazilian fans into a frenzy.

Aldo showed off some absolutely amazing takedown defense during the single round that the fight lasted, completely shutting down the man that most considered posed the greatest threat to his featherweight title.

With Mendes now completely out of the title picture, there is a significant gap between Aldo and the rest of the weight class, a problem that should cause the UFC to make some tough choices in the next few months.

There is literally no one close to Aldo in terms of talent at 145 lbs., but even more disturbing is that there is no one who has separated themselves from the pack in any way whatsoever in order to earn a shot at Aldo’s belt.

The UFC’s options are now down to the winner of Hatsu Hioki and Bart Palaszewski (who will fight at UFC 144 and the winner will only have two wins in the UFC), Dustin Poirer (who is fighting a UFC newcomer next month) or Chan Sung Jung (who is coming off an impressive win over Mark Hominick, but is only on a two-fight win streak.)

Basically, Aldo may be on the sidelines for a little while, as the UFC has to sort out a mess of a division in order to find him something that even resembles a threat to his title.

And unless Aldo wants to vacate his belt and try his luck at lightweight, it would seem that the UFC has found a featherweight champion that is going to be ruling his division for a very long time.