By Guilherme Cruz

Photo Josh Hedges

In mid-October, TATAME published exclusively a proposal made by UFC to José Aldo to change for a heavier weight division and confronting Kenny Florian. The featherweight champion of WEC told that they turned down the proposal. On a chat with TATAME, André Pederneiras, leader of the team in Rio de Janeiro, talked with us and revealed that it was his decision to turn down the offer, made days before the fusion between UFC and WEC, with turned out to guarantee Ultimate’s belt to Aldo.

A little bit before the fusion of the two events was announced, there were a possibility of a fight between José Aldo and Kenny Florian, with Junior changing his weight class… Did you know that there would be a fusion? Was that the reason they offered you this fight?

I didn’t know about the fusion, I didn’t have a clue… I was caught by surprise. Junior’s managers had a chat with the guys from Ultimate, and they suggested that they fought, that the third guy on the ranking, pound by pound, would fight the fourth in the world (Frankie Edgar, current lightweight champion of UFC). As the two events belong to the same owner, they thought it was possible and made the proposal.

What was UFC’s answer?

A counter-offer was made with a fight between Aldo and Kenny Florian. They offered us this and I was the first to decline it. Aldo fighting Ultimate’s champion, the fourth in the world, is one thing. It’s the champion of the event fighting a champion of the same organization, but on the weight division above. It’s the same thing that Ultimate confronts champions of two different divisions of the event. But the counter-proposal was not interesting…

Why did you turn it down?

When they said it’d be Kenny Florian, it’s not that he’s not a tough guy, I think he’s an excellent athlete, but he’s coming from a bad result and, unfortunately for him, he was never Ultimate’s champion, and now he’s not even on the top 10 pound by pound, so I couldn’t see why this fight should happen. Who turned the proposal down was me, and nobody else. Aldo wanted to fight, but who turned it down was me because I understand this fight wouldn’t bring any benefit to him, independently that Kenny Florian is a great fighter or not.

If they have offered Sean Sherk, on a similar situation, maybe I’d have accepted, it was more likely. He was a guy coming from a win and he once was the champion of the event, so we declined the offer because of that. It wasn’t because we were afraid of the other guy, it was because I thought I wasn’t worth it. Junior is a very young guy and he’ll get heavier naturally, we don’t need to force anything. On the following week, it turned out he was UFC’s champion on the division below, so it was even better.

Aldo has been dominating the division, and now he’ll defend UFC’s belt on the 1st day of January, against Josh Grispi. Winning this fight, do you believe there’re no more challenges for him on this weight class and it’s a natural course for him to change to the lightweight division?

Man, I think that an opponent is always an opponent, it’ll always be hard, independently if it’s Grispi or not. There are many good fighters on their division. It’s a different division than the heavyweight, for an example, where you can fight at the age of 46 because the rhythm of the fight is much slower than on the light or featherweight divisions. The number of athletes on this division much higher, so the challenge for a guy on the featherweight division, to maintain his belt, is much greater than a heavier guy because on the heavyweight it’s not likely that many guys with good technique, good physical and explosive like Cain Velasquez to show up. You’ll find three or four, and there’ll be like fifty guys who won’t be half as good as him, while on the lighter divisions you see that happening always. (Urijah) Faber himself, has always been a tough guy, has always won, then started coming up many tough guys and he lost. Miguel Torres has always been a tough guy too and he lost twice in a row.