Jose Aldo: I want to leave at the top like Georges St-Pierre
A casual glance at almost every piece of promotional material ahead of UFC 189 makes it clear that top ranked challenger Conor McGregor is doing everything in his power to hype up the main event as he faces featherweight champion Jose Aldo.
From jumping over the cage and confronting Aldo after his last win to grabbing the champion's belt when they were doing a world press tour, McGregor's fingerprints are all over the machine that's churning out new pay-per-view buys on a daily basis.
UFC president Dana White isn't immune to the McGregor influence either because he can rarely do an interview these days without the Irishman's name coming up. But in the midst of all this McGregor pandemonium, is the No. 1 pound-for-pound fighter in the sport somehow being forgetting despite the fact that his name is the first one on the marquee for UFC 189?
"I focus on myself, I think about me and the fight for me. I forget the promotion, how big it is. The next fight is always the toughest for me. When I win it, the next one will be tougher. This 'fight of the century' thing, I leave for those who like to talk and promote," Aldo said recently.
"Dana (White) talks a lot, so let him talk. He does that well and what I do well is fight. I try to stay focused on getting there and fighting."
Aldo has never gotten into hyping his fights much or getting into long, drawn out rivalries with any opponent. Only recently before his last title fight against Chad Mendes did Aldo finally show some real fire as he pushed the challenger at a press event a few months ahead of the event.
What really sold the show, however, was the performance Aldo put on as he defeated Mendes for a second time while picking up his seventh straight title defense as the only featherweight champion in UFC history.
Whether it's Mendes or McGregor or any other opponent, Aldo says the same thing will happen at UFC 189. He's going to walk in as a dominant champion, put on a stellar performance and walk back out with the belt around his waist.
"I'm the dominant champion. I'm keeping this title for years, I'm always at the top of the division and at the top of the pound for pound ranking, so that makes it big," Aldo said. "But I don't care about it if Dana promotes the other athlete or not. The important thing is that I'm the champion."
"The promotion doesn't guarantee nothing, the champion does and it doesn't matter if they are promoting or not."
While UFC 189 is on pace to being the biggest show in 2015 and possibly one of the highest grossing shows of all time, Aldo is more concerned about the legacy he's been building for years and McGregor will ultimately just become another chapter in the book of his career.
Instead of worrying about McGregor's latest trash talk or outlandish antic, Aldo would rather think about the long game like staying undefeated in the UFC and racking up more title defenses than anybody in history. He looks at some of the all time greats like former welterweight king Georges St-Pierre, who ruled his division for years and then went out on top.
Those are the things Aldo finds most important as he looks at long term goals, not shutting up another loud braggart who claims to have what it takes to take what he has.
"I've seen champions that didn't do well in their careers in the end. I want to leave at the top, as champion, like Georges St-Pierre did," Aldo said.
"That's what I focus on. It doesn't matter who the opponent is, if I already fought him or not, if I'm going to, when I stop, when I look back, I will see that I fought the best and did pretty well."
