The UFC appeared to botch a golden opportunity to have Conor McGregor and Jose Aldo face off after the Irishman’s victory Sunday night.
But UFC President Dana White would later explain to Ariel Helwani why the two future adversaries did not face off in the cage.
“He is superstitious, White said. “He will not step foot inside the octagon unless it is to fight. I just wanted to clarify that because it looked weird but nobody told Jose and he doesn’t go in there except to fight.”
Indeed, it did appear weird considering Joe Rogan had called for Aldo to step into the cage to square off against McGregor during the Irishman’s post-fight interview. Those plans would be nixed on the fly and instead we had Aldo speaking through an interpreter following McGregor’s interview.
Despite the fact that the Aldo-McGregor staredown photo-op didn’t happen, fans still were able to see one of heck of an image immediately after the fight.
Following a dominant win over the out-matched Dennis Siver, McGregor hopped over the cage and went straight towards Aldo. The image of McGregor screaming into Aldo’s face while being restrained by security with Aldo simply laughing figures to be shown numerous times in the lead-up to their clash.
The fight has the potential to be one of the biggest the UFC has put on given the following McGregor has. In a short amount of time McGregor has gone from touted prospect to UFC megastar. It’s pretty telling that McGregor main-evented a card on just his third UFC appearance.
Meanwhile Aldo is the reigning champion and hasn’t lost since 2005. He was recently pushed to the limits by Chad Mendes in their epic UFC 179 fight, a fight that will surely be on anyone’s short list for Fight of the Year.
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