The UFC appears to be running down a muddy road whilst promoting and marketing big fights. Things are getting heated up, with the UFC only being a few weeks away from the company’s big step-up in New York with UFC 205, and with UFC 206 in Canada.
The former featherweight champion Jose Aldo appears to be left out of any of these big plans. But Aldo has no problem facing the next big fish in the pond, Anthony Pettis. Max Holloway who has been on a nine-fight win streak seems to be the most deserving contender for a shot at Aldo.
But a match between former lightweight champ Pettis taking on the current interim featherweight champ Aldo would certainly draw better Pay-per-view numbers than Holloway serving as Aldo’s opponent.
Recently, Aldo had shocked the world revealing his plans to retire from the sport and thus requesting a release from his UFC contract. He wished to make a career change willing to opt for some other sport as he stated that he is still in his youth to do so.
Dana White had recently expressed his desire to see a rematch between interim UFC featherweight champ Jose Aldo and Conor McGregor for the title unification.
But only last week White changed his plans, cancelled plans for the UFC 206 headlining event Eddie Alvarez vs Khabib Nurmagomedov and matched McGregor against Alvarez to fight for his UFC Lightweight title at UFC 205 instead.
This announcement left Aldo heartbroken and prompted him to threaten to leave the UFC and retire. But White opposed Aldo’s wishes and firmly stated that the company respects the Brazilian and has other plans for him, thus rejecting Aldo’s proposal of termination of his contract.
"I’m already frustrated that it might happen, but we’ll see," Aldo recently told Brazilian TV show Revista Combate, according to mmafighting.com. He was further quoted as saying:
"Every night I ask ‘give me one more chance to get in there again with him and I know it won’t happen again.’ but if it’s not him, I think I’d prefer to fight Pettis. I with them learned that I don’t have to look at the promotion’s side, the title run. A fight with Pettis would sell a lot more than Holloway."
Anthony Pettis was originally scheduled to fight Aldo back in 2013 but the bout was cancelled. He made a successful featherweight debut against Charles Oliviera submitting him in round three, thus portraying himself as a threat in the 145-pound division.
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