Following his lightweight title win over Ben Henderson at the weekend Anthony Pettis called out featherweight champion Jose Aldo, and it appears the Brazilian is ready, willing and able to meet that challenge.
Dana White’s comments post-fight that Aldo’s manager Andre Pederneiras had made the fighter, “look like he’s afraid to fight Pettis” by demanding that he fight him at 145lbs have fired up the Brazilian fighter who’s now eager to let it be known that he’ll fight anyone at any weight.
“The only things I fear in this life are God and not having food to eat,” Aldo responded in an interview with the Combate site. “If a heavyweight wanted to fight me on the streets, would I ask him what his weight was? No. So you can schedule this sh*t, and let’s stop this ‘blah, blah, blah.’
“This is the fight we want to watch. Let’s make it happen, Dana.”
Aldo is essentially leaving it in the UFC’s hands to decide whether he should move up in weight or if Pettis should move down so it’ll be interesting to see what they come up with should they opt to put this fight together.
Technically, I’d say Pettis should move down since Aldo is a far more established champion at this stage with five successful defenses of his featherweight belt since joining the UFC. Pettis was also scheduled to move down to fight him earlier this year before an injury forced him to pull-out, so the groundwork had already been laid down for the bout to be at that weight-class.
On the other hand, Aldo’s been hinting for some time at a move up to lightweight, so this would be the ideal time to make the switch. Logistically it’d also be much better for the UFC if he chose to do so. If Pettis moves down and wins then he’d now hold two belts which would be an awkward situation, whereas if Aldo moves up the idea is that this would be a permanent switch so he’d vacate his 145lb belt first.
We could be getting ahead of ourselves here though. It’s not guaranteed that the UFC will want to make this fight right away, and indeed they might not be able to even if they did as the reports backstage following UFC 164 were that Pettis had injured his knee again and will need scans to see if it’s going to keep him out for an extended period.
