Written by Photo by Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC
Jose Aldo’s bantamweight run may have come to an end after the former UFC and WEC champion failed to hit the 136-pound limit for his UFC 315 clash with Aiemann Zahabi in Montreal.
Aldo and Zahabi were scheduled to meet in a three-round bantamweight contest Saturday in Canada, but the Brazilian stepped on the scale at 143 pounds on Friday morning. Zahabi was next, weighing slightly lighter. The UFC immediately announced that the bout was changed to a featherweight contest.
Aldo said on the Brazilian UFC 315 weigh-in show after the ceremonial weigh-ins on Friday afternoon that there’s a “big” chance he goes back to featherweight for his next fights.
“I was talking to ‘Dede’ about it,” said Aldo, referring to longtime coach and manager Andre Pederneiras. “I’ve forced too much on this weight. I’ve always weighed around [158 pounds], so I was never as heavy as these featherweights are today, cutting from [176] or higher. So there was no problem for me making [135], but I think I’ve reached a point in my career that it makes no sense to keep forcing [the cut] and taking fight after fight. I love fighting; this is what I like doing, but it’s best to do it at featherweight. But first I gotta think about tomorrow, on Zahabi. I have to go in there and win, and then we’ll see where I go.”
Zahabi told SportsNet earlier today that he was less than a pound away from making weight when the UFC reached out informing his team that Aldo wouldn’t hit the limit, so he stopped the process.
“So I was cutting my weight, and I just got into the blankets this morning, and I was 136.8 pounds,” Zahabi said. “Firas [Zahabi] was receiving the text and the calls to stop cutting. ‘Jose can’t make weight, he’s 145. There’s no way he’s going to make the weight,’ and the commission won’t allow, in Montreal, a five-pound weight difference. So there’s no 20 percent, we have to do a featherweight fight. We can’t do a bantamweight fight. A bantamweight fight option is off the table completely.”
Aldo told a different story, though, saying he was slightly over 63kg, or 139 pounds, when he talked to Pederneiras about not cutting the final three pounds.
“It was all going well at bantamweight, I was hitting the target on a daily basis and cutting weight well, but it was my mistake,” Aldo said. “I couldn’t reach a certain point, so I talked to ‘Dede’ and found it was best to do this fight — I was almost at [139], so I had already worked all night, and in the morning, so I talked to ‘Dede’ and he talked to Sean [Shelby] at 6 a.m., if I’m not mistaken. They talked to Zahabi if he would take it, and he did, so it was then booked for featherweight.”