Not only is Chad Mendes the only fighter who has stepped into the cage with both UFC featherweight champion Jose Aldo Jr. and interim featherweight champ Conor McGregor, but those fighters have handed him the only losses of his career.
Mendes is 0-3 against the duo following his UFC 189 loss to McGregor and 17-0 over the rest of his career.
So the Team Alpha Male fighter is in a unique position to make an honest assessment of the looming bout between Aldo and McGregor, which figures to be among the biggest in UFC history.
While Mendes is taking nothing away from McGregor, he has another level of respect for Aldo, who beat in 2012 and again last summer.
“I’m just going to say Jose is a different beast, man,” Mendes said at the UFC 189 post-fight press conference in Las Vegas. “He’s a tough dude.”
In McGregor’s case, Mendes was impressed with the striking accuracy of the man who finished him late in the second round.
“More than anything, he’s accurate,” Mendes said. “That’s what plays into, I guess, the success he has with his punches. But nothing really was, like, overwhelmingly powerful. He’s got power, but he’s more accurate than anything.”
When push comes to shove, though, Mendes isn’t ready to call a winner in between Aldo and McGregor.
“That’s a fight that I’m looking forward to watching, but, it’s going to be a good one,” he said.