LAS VEGAS — B.J. Penn is glad Jose Aldo did not compete at UFC 189. And he had a message for the UFC featherweight champion over the weekend.
“Aldo, you’re the old lion,” Penn said Sunday after being inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame at the UFC Fan Expo. “You’re the champion. You’re the one with the record, you’re the one with the gold, you’re the one with all the records. The lion doesn’t care that the sheep laugh at him. Remember that. The lion just stays there. The animals make noise and tease. The guy with the belt is the lion.”
Penn and Aldo have trained together on occasion. Both men are Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belts under Andre Pederneiras, the patriarch of legendary Rio de Janeiro fight team Nova Uniao.
Penn was in Vegas to receive his induction and Aldo was not. The champion was supposed to fight Conor McGregor in the main event of UFC 189 on Saturday, but pulled out two weeks before due to a rib injury. Aldo’s doctors say it was a broken rib, while the UFC and its doctors say it was a bruise and cartilage damage.
The details don’t matter necessarily matter to Penn.
“If Aldo is not 100 percent, I do not want to see him inside that ring,” Penn said. “I do not want to see him in that ring if he’s not 100 percent.”
Penn is the greatest lightweight in the history of the UFC and one of only two men to capture UFC titles in two different weight classes. Aldo is the best featherweight ever in MMA and one of the top pound-for-pound fighters in the world right now.
UFC president Dana White said last week that Aldo left nearly $4 million on the table by not fighting at UFC 189. The good news is that Chad Mendes stepped into what was deemed an interim title fight and McGregor beat him. Now, the hotly anticipated matchup between Aldo and McGregor will be even bigger — and every party stands to make a boatload of money.
So, regardless of what Aldo’s injury actually was, it was obviously severe and now mostly moot. Penn thinks he made the right choice, though he was not sure what he would have done himself.
“I’m not in that position,” Penn said. “I cannot speak on that.”