Jose Aldo says Khabib Nurmagomedov turned down fight in 2016

Former UFC featherweight champion Jose Aldo has responded to former UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov and has talked about their failed fight which was supposed to happen in 2016. Jose Aldo and Khabib Nurmagomedov fought just a weight class apart from each other. Many fans always speculated about a potential fight between them. But now Jose Aldo made a shocking statement as he revealed about a scheduled fight between him and Khabib which was supposed to take place in 2016 but never got materialized.

Khabib Nurmagomedov last fought at UFC 254 and defended his lightweight title against Justin Gaethje. After the fight, he announced his retirement and walked away from the sport with an astonishing record of 29-0. He recently made a few comments about Jose Aldo when he was asked about the former featherweight champion.

“A fight against ‘Cowboy’ won’t show what level you’re at, just like Aldo’s fight against Pedro Munhoz. Let him fight Petr the same way. Then we can say he’s peaking again. You saw what he did. He closed up and waited for the ref to stop the fight. That shows that you’re not at your peak. If you’re getting hit and you’re conscious and you’re not defending yourself, I call those fighters businessmen. They come out to make money.”

Jose Aldo says Khabib talks a lot

Former featherweight champion and the current bantamweight contender Jose Aldo is trying to reach the top of the bantamweight category and start his new reign as the bantamweight champion. He is on a two-fight winning streak and has scored wins over Pedro Munhoz and Marlon Vera.

Speaking on this week’s episode of MMA Fighting’s Portuguese-language podcast Trocacao Franca, Aldo responded to Khabib Nurmagomedov.

“He’s saying you can’t peak again, but we just saw an example with Glover [Teixeira], who got there, lost, and got there again at age 42 and won [the UFC title], completely dominated the champion, took him down and submitted him,” Aldo said. “[Israel] Adesanya himself fought [Jan Blachowicz] for five rounds, a pretty boring fight, two high-level athletes, and Glover, who’s older than me [won]. Sometimes Khabib talks too much. He’s not doing much these days, he’s retired, so he’s looking for [attention] that way.”

Jose Aldo then went on to talk about a fight he was offered way back in 2016 against a fighter for an interim lightweight title. Aldo said that his scheduled opponent refused to fight as his opponent’s father refused to accept the fight. Now Jose Aldo has revealed that his opponent was none other than Khabib Nurmagomedov.

“I was traveling when [my coach] ‘Dede’ [Pederneiras] called me,” Aldo said. “The [UFC] had offered me this fight and we took it. I said, ‘What? I want that, I’m in.’ I respect everybody, but that opportunity … I was the featherweight champion, and [Nurmagomedov] didn’t think it was a good [idea]. I don’t know if he was expecting to fight somebody else, I don’t know what he was thinking at the time. I think it could have been a great fight.”

“I wanted to test myself. Everybody always asks me. … It’s funny, everybody thinks I train wrestling a lot. No, man, I usually do the same training with my team, so, to me, it would have been a really tough test. I’ve always fought against American wrestling and it was hard to take me down, so it would be a tough test against him, if he would be able to impose his takedown game against me knowing that I have pretty good takedown defense as well.” (H/T MMA FIGHTING.COM)