Current World Extreme Cagefighting featherweight champion José Aldo (18-1) turned down a fight with Kenny Florian in the UFC according to the fighter who spoke to Tatame.com recently.
According to the fighter, his managers declined the bout. “They made the proposal. I wanna fight, it can be at WEC or in the UFC.”
Having turned down that fight, Aldo will instead face Canadian Mark Hominick (19-8) in January at an upcoming unnamed WEC event.
Aldo is coming off a recent win over Manny Gamburyan at last month’s WEC 51 event. The fighters second straight consecutive title defense and his eleventh straight victory. Aldo earned a unanimous decision over Urijah Faber at WEC 48 previous to the Gamburyan win.
Hominick won a split decision over Leonard Garcia on the same WEC 51 card in September, earning him a shot at the featherweight title according to Aldo. The Canadian fighter has earned four straight wins that include victories over Yves Jabouin, Bryan Caraway, and Savant Young.
In that interview with Tatame, Aldo alluded to the reason for fighting at 145 instead of moving up in weight, saying that to many of his teammates fought at 155 and that it was better for him to stay at featherweight.
Actually I’ve starter on a lighter division, then changed to this one and tried the division above, but it’s up to Dedé and he knows better. When I was fighting on the division above he thought there were many people of the gym on that division, and on my division there’s me and Marlon (Sandro) and I can play pretty hard on this one and I’m the champion, so I think it’s best for me to stay on this weight division.