Andre Pederneiras (Jose Aldo’s coach): Aldo’s managers had a conversation with the UFC guys, and suggested a fight between him (the 3rd p4p in the world) and the 4th p4p (Frankie Edgar, the current UFC LW champ)

Guilherme Cruz: What was the answer from the UFC?

AP: A counter proposal was made for a fight between Kenny Florian and Aldo. They asked me about it and I was the first to say no. Aldo fighting a UFC champion, the 4th p4p, is one thing. It’s like the UFC 145lb champion fighting the 155lb. But the counter proposal was not interesting.



GC: Why didn’t you accept it?

AP: It’s not that Florian is not tough or anything. I think he’s an excellent athlete, but he’s coming from a loss and, unfortunately for him, he has never been a UFC champion, and today is not between the top 10 p4p. I was the one who said no, nobody else did. Aldo wanted to fight, but I didn’t let him do it because this fight wouldn’t bring any advantage at all for us, regardless of if Florian is a great fighter or not.

If they offered us Sean Sherk in a situation like that, I’d have probably accepted it. He was a guy coming from a win and a former UFC champion. We didn’t deny the Florian fight for fear or anything, it was just not worth it. Aldo is a very young kid and will move up to LW naturally. It just happened on the following week that he became the UFC 145lb champion, so it was even better for him.

Read entire article… (original Portuguese)