UFC Featherweight Champion Jose Aldo is Just Getting Started
Jose Aldo might be heading towards his best years in the UFC.
It was supposed to be his great fall.
Like a textbook Hollywood movie, Aldo, the dominant champ, reign eternal, was bested by a lone Irish wolf emerging from the shadows. Ten years of legacy erased in one fell swoop.
Aldo was supposed to ride off into the sunset, never to be heard from or seen again.
We have lived through a time of dominant champions suffering spectacular defeats, and many of the times, our tendency has been to dismiss them off hand. From Anderson Silva to Ronda Rousey, watching these dominant athletes compete makes us imagine them indestructible. They face challengers that most assume will never be able to get it done against the champions they have watched outstrike, outwrestle, and decisively beat everyone that has come against them before.
When the one important challenger finally does accomplish the impossible, our assumptions fall to the former champions – they will never return, and even if they do, it won’t be back to form, in the way we know they were once capable of.
Arguably no one has suffered this condemnation more unfairly than Jose Aldo. Years of dominating the fighters in his division that are some of the most excellent pound-for-pound in the business – names like Mendes, Faber, Lamas – seemed to be forgotten overnight after Aldo rushed into the left hander that would ultimately knock him out cold. So much so that he closed as an underdog against Frankie Edgar in their UFC 200 rematch. A match that Edgar had lost in their previous encounter.
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But the script was logical, and there for all to follow: Aldo, last seen suffering of a devastating KO loss to Conor McGregor, would be hesitant and gun-shy, a sitting duck for the motivated Edgar, now on a five-fight win streak and eyeing championship opportunities of his own.
Aldo refused to play along. He dismantled Frankie Edgar over five rounds, undermining his offensive endeavors at every turn and stringing together lethal combinations to best Edgar yet again, and show he hadn’t missed a step. Public cynicism had not made him balk.
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His biopic, Jose Aldo: Mais Forte Que O Mundo (Stronger Than The World) came at a curious time in Aldo’s life. The focus on his loss seemed to eulogize his career at times. His victory just days later cast it in more positive consideration: it wasn’t commemorating the end of an entire career, but rather, a chapter.
Jose Aldo is a formidable force in the UFC of 2017, and at just 30 years old it’s likely he remains so for years to come. With a championship unifier with Max Holloway in his sights, and his name in the mouths of men like Bantamweight champion Cody Garbrandt, he will remain one of the more relevant stars of the lighter divisions, too.
The up and coming fighters of today are perhaps the hungriest they have ever been, and there are a wealth of established names, too, that would be spectacularly entertaining matchups for the recently crowned champion of the featherweight division.
But MMA fans would do well not to count Aldo out this time around. Because while the era of Aldo may have just ended, it might just be getting started, too.
