If Jose Aldo Means to Be an All-Time UFC Great, Time to Impress Is Now
Don’t get me wrong, Jose Aldo has been a very good champion for the UFC.
Aldo, in fact, is the only featherweight titlist the Octagon has ever known. By the time the UFC absorbed the WEC at the end of 2010, he’d so firmly entrenched himself as the best 145-pounder in the world, executives merely “promoted” him to the rank of UFC champion without bothering to have him fight for it.
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It was the right move. Today, he's the fight company’s longest-reigning champ. As he approaches a UFC 179 rematch with Chad Mendes on Saturday, he's No. 2 on the organization’s official pound-for-pound rankings. His streak of successful UFC/WEC title defenses stands at eight and—perhaps most astounding of all—he’s the proud owner of 17 consecutive overall victories.
All impressive numbers from any vantage.
But "very good" has never been good enough for a guy with as much potential as Aldo.
There was a time back in his WEC days when he appeared poised to take his place among MMA’s all-time greats. His run through the UFC’s kid brother organization established him as one of the most exciting and terrifying fighters on the planet. He seemed like the perfect person to shepherd the featherweight division out of the company’s smaller blue cage and into the limelight.
With his fearsome (sometimes otherworldly) striking skills and perfectly scarred face, Aldo felt predestined to be a superstar on the order of Chuck Liddell, Georges St-Pierre or even Brock Lesnar.
Unfortunately, that guy never really showed up in the Octagon. During his UFC run, Aldo has seldom appeared vulnerable, but he's also seldom appeared truly great.
He’s been hampered by an endless string of physical ailments, including yet another injury to his neck that caused the cancellation of UFC 176 in August. He survived a close call against Mark Hominick but has otherwise breezed through fairly nondescript wins over the likes of Kenny Florian, Frankie Edgar and Ricardo Lamas.
In the WEC he was a human highlight reel, but his UFC appearances have been typified by technical but unmemorable brilliance. His leg kicks are splendid, and his punches are near flawless, but signature moments have been few and far between.
Even in bouts that appeared ripe for him to make a statement—like against Lamas at UFC 169—it occasionally appeared that Aldo was content to grind out lopsided yet run-of-the-mill decisions.
Meanwhile, even as he’s scuffled, a strange thing has happened around him. The featherweight division is suddenly as robust and interesting as it ever has been. Where once it seemed like the champion’s dominance would never be questioned, there is suddenly an intriguing gaggle of contenders nipping at his heels.
It starts this weekend with Mendes, who has been on an absolute tear since a somewhat controversial loss to Aldo in January 2012. The Team Alpha Male product had managed fairly well throughout the first round at UFC 142, before Aldo employed a blatant cage grab to avoid being taken down, wheeled on Mendes and knocked him out with a knee to the jaw one second before the horn.
(Remember what we said about signature moments? That was one of Aldo’s best, but even it was marred by the previous rules violation.)
In the wake of the defeat, Mendes has put together five straight wins (four of them by stoppage), each one giving the impression his stand-up abilities have caught up with his Division I All-American wrestling skills.
If Aldo can defeat the much-improved Mendes—and maybe even do so in impressive fashion—it could set the stage for a very profitable and high-profile 2015. If the longtime champion can just stay healthy and reconnect with his inner knockout artist, he might even get the chance to prove he can still be a promotional dynamo.
A springtime rematch with Cub Swanson or Edgar could be in the offing. After that, a big ticket bout with Conor McGregor will certainly be waiting and near the end of the 2015, perhaps Dennis Bermudez, too. Where before there had been talk that Aldo might move up to lightweight to face champion Anthony Pettis in a superfight, it suddenly seems like his best course of action is to stay home.
Despite the tribulations of the last few years, he’s still only 28 years old. Theoretically, he’s still in the heart of his athletic prime, and the greatest challenges of his MMA career may be at hand.
In other words, the time to take the ball and run with it is now. The 145-pound class will be garnering a lot of eyeballs over the next 12 months or so. It would be sort of a shame if the man to lead the lighter weight classes into the promised land turned out to be McGregor, not Aldo.
No, it would be far better for the UFC’s last Brazilian champion to finally seize the brass ring that has seemed so tantalizingly close for much of his career. Fact is, he still has an outside shot at lofting himself into the stratus of the all-time greats. He can still make good on the promise of his early WEC days.
Will he ever be the superstar he once seemed destined to be?
Maybe not, but with a new crop of contenders suddenly reshaping the future of the featherweight division, he's about to get his best chance yet.
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