Longtime featherweight star Jose Aldo is currently planning a move up to lightweight, and the Brazilian ace has now revealed that his divisional debut could have come in a short-notice headliner with Donald Cerrone later this month in Brazil.
Aldo told a media scrum in Brazil earlier this week that Anthony Pettis was initially someone that he was interested in fighting at 155lbs towards the end of the year, but then the UFC floated the idea of having him fight in Brazil in September.
At first Aldo was willing to entertain that idea, but when the UFC then offered him the chance to fight Cerrone, he and his camp soon came to the conclusion that would be not a good idea on short notice.
“When Glover pulled out and they had no main event, they asked if there was a possibility for me to fight,” Aldo revealed. “We accepted, depending on the opponent, and they offered Cerrone right after, and he had already agreed, and ‘Dede’ didn’t think it would be good because there wasn’t enough time. We needed some time to rest before we started another camp again, so it didn’t happen.”
In hindsight Aldo, who is coming off a TKO victory over Jeremy Stephens, thinks it was the right decision, even although Cerrone is coming in off a rough spell in his career in which he’s lost four of his last five fights.
“It would be 155 for sure, right? No way it’s 170, it’s too heavy. But it was tough because we didn’t have enough time to prepare, especially against Cerrone, a very tough guy, someone who fights hard in his losses, so there was no possibility. Maybe the possibility of fighting in Brazil got me overexcited, I said it was possible, but thinking clearly there was no way we could fight, especially someone like Cerrone. I have to be very well trained to fight him.”
Instead, Aldo is now targeting UFC 231 in Toronto, Canada on December 8th as a potential date for his next fight, but at this stage it remains to be seen who his opponent will be.
