Longtime reigning MMA champion, Jose Aldo, lost his title in just seconds into the first round against Conor “The Notorious” McGregor last UFC 194.
The new bantamweight champion threw a powerful left hook that caused Aldo to crash down the mat and ultimately ended the much-awaited fight. A lot of people didn’t expect the heavily promoted bout to end in such a fast way that there’s actually no telling which one between Aldo and McGregor is the better fighter.
A few days after the epic fight, Andre Pederneiras, Nova Uniao’s head MMA coach, recently revealed that Aldo appeared to be overconfident and didn’t follow their agreed fight plan.
“I wouldn’t say anxious. Maybe overconfident, because he was really well. He was so confident in the victory he (thought) ‘I’ll throw (my hand) and will catch him’. It’s a split-second decision. Or you attack, or you get out. He decided to attack, and the other guy threw a counter to defend. He attacked, but moving in a way to stop (Aldo’s) attack,” Pederneiras said during an interview with Combate.
Pederneiras was rather definite that McGregor’s finish was due to a streak of luck though.
“How can you say a superchampion like Aldo made a wrong decision? If you analyze the fight, Aldo threw the first straight, a fake straight, and McGregor threw his punch and it wouldn’t land on Aldo’s chin, but on his head. But Aldo moves up, moves his chin up, and (the punch) lands on his chin. McGregor wanted to land on his head. And with Aldo moving up, McGregor can’t say he calculated to hit right there. He will say this, but it’s something hard to say, especially because if Aldo goes in and throws his punch, it wouldn’t have landed. However, he was happy. Let’s say it wasn’t a lucky punch, he programmed that, but the way it connected on his chin when he moved forward, I think it was lucky,” Pederneiras said.
Aldo’s camp called out for a rematch as soon as the MMA fight was over. “The Notorious”, on the other hand, has a lot on his plate right now so there’s no definite plans of rematch on his end yet. McGregor might shift to another division and go against Rafael dos Anjos, or if not, he might defend his title against fellow MMA fighter, Frankie Edgar.
As for Pederneiras, he shared his thoughts about the said choices for McGregor.
“Well, I disagree. They don’t care if I agree or not, but here’s what I say: I can’t see Aldo not fighting for a belt or not in an immediate rematch. It wouldn’t be fair if that doesn’t happen, but happen to others. ‘There’s no immediate rematch for anyone’, cool, we know what the rule is. ‘(There’s rematch) because she’s blond and sells well’? I’ll dye Aldo’s hair. Right? I don’t see other scenario than a new fight, so we can really have a fight. In my head, what happened wasn’t a fight, just a punch that landed and ended it quickly,” he said.