Jose Aldo wants nothing more than a chance to exact revenge on Conor McGregor, but even he knows that shouldn’t be his next fight.
When there are two belt-holders in one division, the logical next step is to have a title unification bout. Max Holloway knew when he knocked out Anthony Pettis at UFC 206 that the interim strap would represent his ticket for a shot at Jose Aldo’s belt.
It’s been two months since Holloway was crowned interim champion and the fight has yet to be booked.
‘Blessed’ is out of action for the next while recovering from an old ankle injury that flared up again in his last trip to the Octagon. With his recent announcement that he will be filming a new movie starring Gerrard Butler, 50 Cent and Ice Cube’s son from March to April, Aldo’s growing frustrated at the prospect of being inactive for over a year is obvious.
Back to normality https://t.co/gJ9spgiNmo
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) February 9, 2017
In an interview with Combate, Aldo’s head coach Andre Pederneiras voiced his exasperation at Holloway’s excuses. He claimed that there was a date for the title unification bout in mind before Holloway was booked to fight Pettis, but that’s almost passed by without any bout agreement signed.
“Sincerely I don’t know what goes on this guy’s head. What is happening in UFC today makes us very upset.”
“Holloway, when he accepted the fight with Pettis, both of them knew that the fight was scheduled for February 11th, and both accepted that fight. One or two days later he says that his foot is injured, that he has to take his kid to Disney and that his gym closed. He gave three excuses two days later.”
According to Dede, even the UFC matchmakers are growing weary of telling ‘Scarface’ that the fight he thought he was getting just isn’t on the cards anymore.
“It got to the point where I talked with Sean Shelby and he said ‘I don’t even know what to tell you anymore.'”
He added that it reached the stage where the UFC were offering his team fights that made no sense whatsoever, such as a title defence against top-ranked featherweight Cub Swanson. While Swanson has arguably done enough to earn a crack at the belt, it’s hard to justify giving it to him when there is an interim champion in the mix.
“They offered us a fight with Cub Swanson that doesn’t make any sense. ‘Oh, if Aldo doesn’t want to be inactive he fights Cub Swanson’. Dude, what am I going to do with Cub Swanson? It isn’t like ‘after him, you get the fight’, no, it’s not him. They are offering us anyone to make the fight.”
What’s the solution here? Do we introduce a second interim belt and let Swanson and the Korean Zombie duke it out for it?
Winner gets a movie deal.
