Jose Aldo will look to defend the UFC featherweight title, once again, at UFC 163. Challenging the champion will be Chan Sung Jung, who stepped in as a replacement for an injured Anthony Pettis.
Should he beat Jung on Saturday, Aldo would join Tito Ortiz, Jon Jones, Anderson Silva, Matt Hughes and Georges St-Pierre as the only fighters to earn five consecutive UFC title defenses. Aldo is already considered one of the top pound-for-pound fighters in MMA today, but being put on the same level as those names could earn him more recognition as one of the best competitors in history.
Meanwhile, Jung has his sights set on completing an amazing career turnaround following a knockout loss to now-bantamweight George Roop.
As Aldo and Jung prepare to meet at UFC 163, it’s time to dig deeper into the matchup and see which fighter is most likely to have their hand raised over the coming weekend.
Key Stats
Noted for his wild fights with Leonard Garcia and Dustin Poirier, Jung gets hit frequently. Avoiding only 64 percent of strikes thrown at him, Jung does not have better striking defense than any of Aldo’s past UFC opponents. Obviously, Jung going tit for tat with one of the best strikers in MMA won’t be a formula for success on Saturday.
Stuffing 92 percent of takedowns against him, Aldo is not taken down often. However, all three opponents who took the Brazilian down since he became a champion under the Zuffa banner have dragged Aldo into deep waters and forced him to win on the scorecards.
While Aldo has faced solid wrestlers like Frankie Edgar and Chad Mendes inside the Octagon, Jung’s takedown success rate of 83 percent is better than any of the featherweight titleholder’s previous UFC opponents. In order to become champion at UFC 163, Jung will likely need to find a way to drag Aldo down multiple times.
Game Plans
The last time Aldo faced an opponent with the submission ability of Jung, he adopted a boxing approach against Kenny Florian. The champion did mix in a few leg kicks against the now-UFC commentator, but he kicked much less than he usually does to avoid putting himself in a position to be taken down with a caught leg.
Expect a similar game plan from Aldo on Saturday.
Jung, meanwhile, will likely look to wear Aldo down with grappling and fast pacing. Although the Korean’s striking isn’t bad, there’s probably not one featherweight in MMA capable of beating Jose Aldo in a kickboxing match. The blueprint for beating Aldo seems to include making him carry your weight and taking advantage of his sometimes-poor conditioning in the later rounds.
Breakdown
Against almost all of his opponents, Aldo’s leg kicks have been one of his primary attacks. While Aldo might also be able to have plenty of success with leg kicks against Jung, the risk won’t be worth the reward, considering he has the ability to pick his challenger apart with punches.
Jung showed his capability to catch leg kicks against Dustin Poirier, and the last thing Aldo wants in this matchup is to hand his opponent a takedown with a strike he didn’t need to throw.
There’s little doubt Aldo would do a better job of setting up his kicks than Poirier did against Jung. However, Aldo’s chances of retaining his belt against an opponent who has been knocked out by George Roop are so much greater when standing that it just doesn’t make sense for him to give Jung extra opportunities for takedowns.
Although he’d be best served boxing, it’s worth noting Aldo’s ability to escape almost immediately from takedowns that result from his rare caught leg kicks.
Even if Aldo does stray from what would seem to be the ideal approach against Jung, he’s not going to be easy to hold down in the event of mistakes. Almost every time the champion has been taken down inside the Octagon, he’s bounced right back up like a spring.
While Jung does have some solid head movement that could allow him to work inside and clinch, Aldo isn’t going to put himself in bad spots like some of the Korean’s past opponents have.
The champion will sit back on his punches and force Jung to be the aggressor in order to get in tight, whereas Poirier essentially handed Saturday’s title challenger a takedown when he overcommitted on the above lunging left hand.
One of the best strikers in MMA, Aldo’s punches keep him in position to defend takedowns when needed. Aldo always keeps a healthy distance between his feet when punching and never gets them crossed up when navigating around the Octagon. When his opponents do shoot in, Aldo’s usually just a whizzer, hip turn and pivot away from creating space and turning his focus back toward striking.
When he’s looking to create takedowns on his own, Jung often backs opponents up with looping punches, hoping to corner them. Aldo rarely allows his adversaries to back him down, and, when he does, he is a master of evading attacks and circling back to the center.
Look for a lot of jabs and straights from Aldo, as he attempts to beat Jung’s wider punches and looks to avoid having a hook of his own timed for a takedown. When Aldo does throw hooks, though, Jung has a tendency to duck them by bending at the waist, as pointed out by Bleacher Report’s own Jack Slack on Tuesday. That could set up the knee that this writer believes will end Saturday’s main event.
If Jung wants to become the new featherweight champion, he’s going to have to find a way to do what others have had difficulty doing against Aldo and pin the champion to the fence. That will help put Aldo’s suspect conditioning to the test early. Should Aldo’s pace start slowing in the third round instead of the fourth, that’s when the titleholder becomes beatable.
Nothing is ever out of the question in MMA, but it’s just very hard to envision “The Korean Zombie” accomplishing something that Frankie Edgar, Urijah Faber and others couldn’t.
Prediction
Aldo defeats Jung by (T)KO in the second round.
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