Jose Also says it's 1, 2, 3 more and done for him. . .

[WeeAl]

So Also has came out and said he wants to retire by the end of 2019, by fighting three times this year and all of the fights taking place in Brazil (February, May and somewhere in the last half of the year). The McGregor loss is what he's going to remembered for in some casual fan circles, but it absolutely shouldn't be. He's one of the greatest of all time, who unfortunately for him, ran into Max Holloway and Conor McGregor at the tail end of his run. He says he doesn't want to continue to fight just for money if he can't compete at the top level, and he's going on a retirement run here of sorts, determined to win his final three in his homeland. Good on him, and I hope he does it. There's a nice little video package above of all his best (and worst) moments.

https://www.mmafighting.com/2019/1/16/18185525/jose-aldo-plan-2019-fight-three-times-brazil-retire-from-mma

Fighters talk retirement all the time and don't often follow through. Another parallel with wrestlers. One thing though that often happens is the second they start talking retirement publicly, they should have already done it. Let's hope this is Aldo seeing the dusk setting on the end of his career and having a plan to go out on his own terms, following through with it and we aren't bringing this thread up again in 2021 - Where a Jose Aldo, on an 0-3 run is coming out of retirement for Golden Boy MMA. 

[Keith Houchen]

It's the old adage, isn't it?  If you're thinking of retiring then you should retire there and then.  However, call this his pension fund year, fuck knows he's deserved it but I worry he might be remembered for the losses at the arse end of his career if his heart isn't in these fights.

[wandshogun09]

Fighters say this stuff a lot and it rarely sticks but I get the feeling with Aldo that he’s going to stick to it. 

Aldo’s decline has been overblown for me. You look at his career and he’s lost to 2 men over the last 13 years. Max Holloway and Conor McGregor. Both at the absolute peak of their form and McGregor caught him so early that it really seemed like a bit of a freak finish. I’d never call it a ‘lucky punch’. It wasn’t. Conor knew what he was doing and timed it to perfection as Aldo overcommitted to his punch. But it felt like a bit of a freak occurrence where lightning struck in the perfect place at the perfect time. If they fought 20 times, you wouldn’t fancy it to go quite like that again. The Holloway losses, Holloway is beating everyone right now. He’s in that zone now that a fighter sometimes gets in where they reach a Matrix-like level where it seems like everything clicks for them and anything they touch turns into gold. Some fighters only seem to have that for a few fights, others might go for a spell of a few years where they look almost untouchable. Jon Jones and Mighty Mouse are currently in that zone now. Anderson Silva was between 2006 and 2013. GSP was for years. Chuck Liddell had it for a very brief time relative to the other names I’ve mentioned, as did Ronda Rousey and Anthony Pettis. 

Aldo himself was like that from 2006 to 2015 when he lost to McGregor. He went on a 9 year run of complete dominance. He was ridiculously good throughout his WEC run beating the likes of Urijah Faber, Mike Brown, Cub Swanson (flying knee KO...in 8 seconds...where both knees connected one after the other!!!) and Manny Gamburyan. Then comes to the UFC and racks up title defences over Mark Hominick, Kenny Florian, Chad Mendes, Frankie Edgar, Korean Zombie, Ricardo Lamas and Chad Mendes again in a FOTY war. A fucking ridiculous run. 

Sadly, the manner in which he lost to McGregor seems to have kind of made a lot of people forget how good he really was. Greats like Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard had losses but they were never knocked out in 13 seconds. That’s MMA though. The unpredictability plus the small gloves means every now and then you’ll see a great fighter put out faster than we’re used to seeing what we think of as a great go down. 

He’s still got some ammunition left though. As he showed in stopping Jeremy Stephens in a round in his last fight. And even before that, when people were shitting on him for the McGregor loss, he came back and shut down and beat Frankie Edgar again at UFC 200, and much more convincingly than their first fight. I do think he’s lost a step, but he’s far from shot. I could still see him beating anyone at 145 not named Max Holloway. The difference now from when he was dominant is that now I can see a couple of guys maybe beating him. Pre-McGregor, he had that aura where there wasn’t really anyone you fancied to stop the reign of terror. Now I could well envision an Ortega, Moicano or Volkanovski giving him problems. 

This Moicano fight is going to be very interesting. I really rate Moicano and he’s younger and much fresher than Aldo. If Aldo can beat him, especially if he does it clearly and decisively, it should completely put to bed the talk that he’s old and washed up. If he loses to Moicano though, I wonder what happens then? 

[Egg Shen]

The McGregor loss probably harmed a legacy more than any other i can think of in MMA history.

[Dead Mike]

3 minutes ago, Egg Shen said:

The McGregor loss probably harmed a legacy more than any other i can think of in MMA history.

Only to people who don't follow MMA. Just vocal McGregor fan boys, nothing more.

[Carbomb]

Both true.

To be fair, in the eyes of fans with a modicum of intelligence and perspective, the only people who can really hurt a fighter's legacy is the fighter him/herself.

[wandshogun09]

@Dead Mike The thing I never got with that is, I’ve read and heard McGregor fans going on like Aldo was shit because of that loss but surely that’s belittling their man’s biggest win? Aldo being as great as he is/was is the very thing that made that win so impressive. Surely admitting Aldo was great and then seeing how McGregor beat him only puts McGregor’s stock even higher? You’d think his fans would get that but there’s a vocal bunch of McGregor arse lickers who just can’t look at things objectively.

It’s one thing that really grated on me, even when I considered myself a big McGregor fan. This need some of them seemed to have to constantly find any little reason to latch onto to put down and hate his opponents, or even anyone who dared speak his name in slightly negative tones. If they were to be believed then Aldo was pissing the bed every night and scared shitless of McGregor. And Dos Anjos faked a broken foot to get out of fighting him. Because you would do that and lose the biggest payday of your career, wouldn’t you? Even Frankie Edgar got slagged off for moaning about not getting his title shot he’d earned around that time. They always seemed to have to put a negative spin on his opponents. He’s scared - based on nothing. He’s a cheat - based on nothing. He’s faking an injury - again, based on sod all. He’s moaning. He doesn’t move the needle (fuck off). He’s broke (that one always really baffles me. Why give a fuck about another man’s financial situation?) Just got SO fucking tiresome.

Then there were the delusional predictions about him walking into Pro Boxing and knocking out Floyd Cunting Mayweather! Even now, there are fans who swear blind that he never said ‘it’s only business’ to Khabib mid-fight because they refuse to believe he’s got any weaknesses or flaws. It’s so weird. It’s grown men as well. I know one. He’s sound and usually switched on about everything yet he loses all sense of judgement and balance when it comes to McGregor fights. There’s no reasoning with him. I get being a fan of someone but I’ve never seen anything like the McGregor groupies. It’s like some of them are brainwashed. He’s Charles McManson. 

I consider Aldo to be McGregor’s best career win by far. The Alvarez win might’ve bagged him a second title and put him in the history books as the first UFC double champ but ending Aldo’s decade long reign with a 13 second KO trumps that for me. Easy. The performance istelf against Alvarez was probably McGregor’s best but as far as a win on the record, Aldo was another level, IMO. Aldo’s going down as a legend, one of the best ever, and McGregor stopped him in one gif’s worth of fighting. He’s very, very unlikely to ever get a win better than that. 

 

Edited January 18, 2019 by wandshogun09

[Dead Mike]

I dunno, it's a really weird one where people were suddenly claiming Aldo was shit & his whole career should be ignored because he'd been injured a bit (they were obviously completely ignorant of his fighting style & training) & because he'd said he wanted more money (unheard of for professional athletes!).  It was good though as it was a great barometer for whose opinion to immediately disregard.

[wandshogun09]

The injury criticism was weird because at the same time Aldo was getting pelters for being ‘a champion that never fights’, you had Dominick Cruz getting nothing but sympathy for the same thing. Every time there was an update that another bit of Cruz had fallen off the general outcry was always along the lines of ‘Ahh that sucks. Poor guy has no luck’. Aldo gets injured it’s ‘Strip him of the belt. He’s a joke’ etc. Anthony Pettis used to get shat on when he kept getting injuries as well, yet Korean Zombie and Cain never seemed to get half the backlash. 

For the record, I’m not saying any of them should’ve got backlash. Nobody loses out more in these situations than the fighter themselves. Last thing they need is a bunch of fat cunts with Wotsit fingers giving them shit about it. Always found the double standards odd though. 

[jimufctna24]

There were nights where Aldo looked like the absolute business. I think back to his 2nd win over Edgar, his first round knockout of Mendes and his WEC run. However, there were also nights where while his performance was excellent, he did look beatable. Mendes took him to the wire in their rematch, and he clung on to a slim lead in the first fight with Edgar.

He occasionally had the tendency to fade in bouts. That's why I think the current version of Holloway is better than any version of Aldo. It's true that Max also gives away rounds. Aldo himself arguably won rounds against him in both of their fights. But the Max we have seen in recent years doesn't seem to fade like Aldo did on occasions. This means that Max can finish fights in the middle rounds, which is something that Aldo struggled to do in the UFC. Aldo's opponents often had more success as the fight wore on. 

Nevertheless, Aldo is without question an all-time great and in the top 5 MMA fighters below 155lbs. Whatever you may think of him, Mighty Mouse is almost certainly the number 1 in that category. Then you have a cluster of other fighters who you could rank behind him at number 2. These include Aldo, Cruz, Max and TJ. Out of those, there is certainly a case to be made for Aldo based on his record, title reign and longevity. 

As for the McGregor rivalry. I cannot deny that some of the criticism pointed towards Aldo was moronic. But dear god that rivalry was one hell of a ride. 

[wandshogun09]

Yeah, Aldo vs McGregor for me was the best build to a fight in UFC history. 

Off the top of my head it was only really the Hominick and Lamas fights where he faded late. And even then it felt like he was just coasting because he was so far ahead. 

The commentary on the Florian fight annoyed me at the time as I thought Aldo was winning comfortably pretty much throughout yet to listen to Goldberg and Rogan you’d have thought Florian was winning. Ken-Flo was always a Zuffa-era company favourite though, wasn’t he? Probably the only reason he ever got the colour commentary and FOX analyst gigs when he retired, because he wasn’t much good at either really. 

Edited January 18, 2019 by wandshogun09

[jimufctna24]

If memory serves correctly, Aldo had a torrid final round against Hominick. But aye, I do recall that he coasted in the fight round against Lamas. I just feel that the Holloway we have seen in recent years has shown to be more impressive against similar level competition. It was more of a struggle for Jose over the full fight. Fine margins. 

A lot of people wanted Florian to beat Aldo and escape the nearly man tag. They wanted another Rampage vs Griffin moment. However, I could never really get invested in Florian one way or another. He was always a decent addition to a card. But he was not someone I actively supported or thought much about. Nevertheless, I don't remember him giving Aldo much bother. I do think Florian was a good fighter. He beat a lot of very good fighters at 155lbs. But he always came up short against the division's best.

[Bus Surfer]

6 hours ago, Dead Mike said:

Only to people who don't follow MMA. Just vocal McGregor fan boys, nothing more.

This is true, but it's pretty common 'water cooler' bollocks that turns me angry. Everything aligned for Conor in that entire build up/fight. Jose may as well have worn a JOB Squad shirt after that. 

My Aldo thoughts have been put more  eloquently already, just a case of bad wrong place, wrong time. 

Edited January 18, 2019 by Silky Kisser

[ColinBollocks]

I agree with Egg. If Aldo beat Conor he would be getting all that GOAT talk thrown his way. Nonetheless, on the biggest stage of Aldo's career against his most anticipated and hated opponent he got sparked out in no time. That's something you most certainly factor in to an overall legacy, casual fan or not. I love Aldo (I've defended him and the talk of his slump many times), he was at one time seemingly invincible, but 100% that Conor defeat has hurt his legacy. Doesn't matter who it is, for example, if GSP got sparked out like that in such a huge fight it would definitely hurt him too and maybe hurt his GOAT credentials.

Of course, that's not to completely discredit his silly win streak pre-Conor. Aldo was one of the great champs pre-USADA and is still one of my favourite fighters. Again, Aldo seemed invincible, but when the lights were at their brightest he got battered. That's as much a part of his legacy as his win streak.

I completely agree it's Conor's most impressive achievement in combat sports. I doubt he'll ever come near it.

Edited January 18, 2019 by ColinBollocks

[WeeAl]

Well, it didn't take very long for Jose to change his mind. He's signed a new, 8 fight deal with the UFC. 

https://www.mmafighting.com/2019/6/24/18716377/former-champion-jose-aldo-new-ufc-deal

I'm glad we'll get to see him fighting for another while yet. Hopefully he looks closer to how he did against Stephens and Moicano than compared to the Volkanovski fight though. 

Edited June 25, 2019 by WeeAl