Jose Aldo became the UFC interim featherweight champion by defeating Frankie Edgar by unanimous decision at UFC 200, a victory he may have earned with the help of some well-placed informants.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Aldo said that he had spies working with Edgar in the week leading up to the July 9 event.
“If I kicked, he’d take me down,” Aldo said, per Guilherme Cruz of MMA Fighting. We had a few spies from the other side, people that were training close to him the entire week, and they always came and talked to us. So I had to stop kicking and [using] my left hand, because he would counter on that.”
The reporters pressed Aldo about his response, which caused him to say, “Of course I had [spies]. Otherwise, why wouldn’t I kick? That’s my instinct.” He added that “we always have a spy” and “we get that information and know what they are training.”
Aldo explained how he managed to pull off securing his spies: “We always have Brazilians in the other corners. When I go train in the first day, I also see the list of [cornermen]. And, if there’s a Brazilian, we go after him and ask him to take a look, because that helps a lot.”
It was apparent during the fight that Aldo was avoiding using leg kicks, which are often a huge part of his offense. Fight Metric calculated him as landing just four significant leg strikes in the five-round bout.
An obvious assumption would be that Aldo didn’t want to go into a match against Edgar, who is a world-class wrestler with excellent takedown skills, by throwing his legs around, as it would give his opponent an easy opening to get him on the ground.
Fighters are kept apart in different training rooms and hotels, so Aldo would’ve had to go out of his way to get someone to keep an eye on Edgar’s training.
The strategy is certainly crossing an ethical line, as well as taking a lot of the sportsmanship out of the match, but it’s not as if Aldo isn’t aware of how Edgar fights.
He may have gotten some insight into the exact strategy Edgar was going to utilize, yet this still doesn’t change the fact that Aldo dominated the fight. Edgar’s been fighting in the UFC for nine years, succeeding because of his wrestling and takedown skills, so there wouldn’t seem to be a lot of new information to glean from spying on his camp.
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