Jose Aldo... who saw that coming?
It's fair to say that Jose Aldo hasn't been the same since he clashed with Conor McGregor. That demanding world tour culminating in a 13-second knockout appeared to change the Brazilian legend.
Prior to taking on 'the Notorious' he was considered one of the most respected fighters in the sport, but the public began to turn on him after seeing his reaction to the loss.
He requested a
contract termination,
threatened legal action and even hinted that he would be
willing to intentionally lose fights to see out the end of his contract once the McGregor rematch slipped through his fingers. Aldo took McGregor's
in-cage promise of a rematch at face value, but that fight has yet to come his way again.
https://twitter.com/SportsJOEdotie/status/931245553790447618?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sportsjoe.ie%2Fmma%2Fjohn-kavanagh-predicts-conor-mcgregor-return-2018-142068
McGregor's been in the news a lot recently, but for the wrong reasons. His memorable appearance at Bellator 187 in Dublin in which he prematurely
leapt into the cage to celebrate with teammate Charlie Ward, shoved
Marc Goddard into a dazed John Redmond on the mat and
struck a Bellator employee in the face got global coverage.
A lot of MMA personalities including Dan Hardy and
Matt Serra have criticised McGregor for causing such chaos by failing to adhere to the rules.
One might expect Aldo to have been rubbing his hands together waiting to kick McGregor while he was down considering the extent of their rivalry. However, 'Scarface' has actually come out in defence of the Dubliner's actions in the 3Arena.
https://twitter.com/SportsJOEdotie/status/932621522820354049
Although he admitted to
MMAFighting that he had not seen the footage, Aldo refused to condemn McGregor. He sees it as 'normal' behaviour for an 'emotional guy' like McGregor:
“I haven’t seen the video, but I heard about it. I think it’s normal. He’s an emotional guy, and when an Irishman is the fighter the Irish people embrace them a lot. I don’t condemn him."
While the spotlight was fully-focused on McGregor's antics rather than Ward's victory following the event, Aldo doesn't believe McGregor did it for the attention:
“He didn’t do that for attention, he’s done that before. When we did The Ultimate Fighter, an athlete from his team won and he went up there and in there, he even tore his pants. He’s really emotional, and I don’t condemn him for what he’s done.”
Of all the people we expected to defend McGregor, we have to admit, Aldo would have been towards the bottom of the list.
