Jose Aldo will be rooting for Conor McGregor to have a successful comeback when he faces Michael Chandler at UFC 303 on June 29.
McGregor will be ending his three-year-long layoff due to a broken leg when he faces Chandler in a highly-anticipated fight. It’s a bout that has been in the works for quite some time and despite Conor McGregor and Jose Aldo being former rivals, the Brazilian says he will be rooting for the Irishman.
“I always root for the guys who I fought and the guys who have beat me because that just proves that I lost to the best. I hope that he can go in there and be the Conor of old and be aggressive, and go in there to finish the fight… I expect great things from that fight,” Jose Aldo said to MMAJunkie.
Despite McGregor knocking Aldo out in 13 seconds at UFC 194 in 2015 to win the featherweight title, the Brazilian will be cheering him on and thinks he can finish the Irishman.
Jose Aldo confirms UFC 301 fight is the last on his deal
Jose Aldo will be returning to the UFC on Saturday, May 4 when he takes on Jonathan Martinez.
Aldo had left the UFC after his loss to Merab Dvalishvili as he wanted to explore boxing options. He ended up having three boxing matches, as he will return to MMA to fight out his UFC deal as he says he will then explore more boxing options, including the match against Floyd Mayweather.
“That’s basically what I told the UFC a couple months ago: I want to do this fight, see where I’m at, see how I do, see how I perform and then I can make a decision,” Aldo said to MMAJunkie. “I’m looking at maybe a big boxing fight maybe somewhere down the line later this year. But we’ll revisit that with the UFC once this fight is done with Jonathan Martinez.
“That fight with Floyd Mayweather was basically all set and done. Ali (Abdelaziz) was the one that was negotiating that and I don’t really know what happened and it ended up not panning out for us to fight in Saudi Arabia. But there’s a big event on Netflix later this year (with Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson), and hopefully, I can get on that. But we’ll have to see. There’s a lot of options floating.”
Before that can happen, Aldo is focused on his return fight in MMA against Martinez in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.