UFC featherweight champion José Aldo (21-1) joined an exclusive club under the Zuffa umbrella with his most recent win earlier this month at UFC 142.
Aldo successfully defended his belt for a fifth time by knocking out opponent Chad Mendes at 4:59 of the first round of the Rio de Janeiro event, joining the likes of Anderson Silva, Georges St-Pierre, Matt Hughes, and Tito Ortiz in that category.
With all of this success, there has been plenty of talk of Aldo making the jump up to 145-lbs after running through much of the competition at featherweight.
For Aldo, in a recent interview with Tatame.com, the decision to move up in weight will eventually be up to his coach/manager Andre Pederneiras.
What are your plans now?
The next step is to keep defending my title for a long time. We’re achieving our goals now, I’m seeing some of my personal dreams coming true, so we gotta keep working and I’m sure we’re gonna break much more records.Many fans would like to see you on the lightweight, but Pederneiras said you’d only do that if you get a chance at the title. What do you think about that?
That I leave for Andre to decide. He takes care of my career. He knows better. If he thinks I should fight, I will. If he thinks it’s not the time yet, I’ll stay here. I’m feeling great on the featherweight. I really wanted to test myself a while ago, since I was at WEC, but Andre knows better. I’ll fight if he wants me to, otherwise I’ll just stay here.When you saw Chad Mendes was knocked out you ran to the fans, like you once did in WEC. What were you thinking?
Actually I was running to one side of the octagon but I ran to the other. It was big, man. Since Ultimate matched we up people were being very affectionate, fans sent me messages, so I thought to myself: if I win this thing, I’m gonna run to the fans. Thank God everything worked out, I could run. The fans liked it, everyone liked it, so it was great.