Aldo Must Be Included In Any MMA “Greatest of All-Time” Discussion

By Adam Martin

After his latest victory, a five-round unanimous decision win over Chad Mendes in the main event of UFC 179, it’s time to start considering UFC featherweight champion Jose Aldo in discussions of all-time pound-for-pound greats in MMA.

Aldo, 28, is 25-1 overall. He has won 18 straight fights, including 15 straight wins in the UFC and WEC, and he hasn’t lost in almost nine years. He is the only featherweight champion the UFC has ever seen and he has made seven defences of his crown since making his UFC debut in 2011. Prior to that, he made two defences of the WEC featherweight title, and all told he is 10-0 in title fights in the UFC and WEC combined.

Aldo’s resume is nothing short of outstanding. His list of victims includes: Chad Mendes (twice), former UFC Lightweight Champion Frankie Edgar, former WEC Featherweight Champion Urijah Faber, Cub Swanson, Chan Sung Jung, Ricardo Lamas, Mark Hominick, Kenny Florian, former WEC Featherweight Champion Mike Brown, Manny Gamburyan, and TUF 12 winner Jonathan Brookins.

His lone career loss came back in 2005 in his eighth fight, when he was submitted in the second round by Luciano Azevedo. Other than that loss, though, he’s been nearly flawless.

I feel like Aldo is the best fighter south of 155 pounds the sport has ever seen. There really is no one else who anyone could make any argument for. In fact, you could include 155 pounds in that discussion as well, because Aldo beat Edgar, the former champ, and Edgar is the guy who has beaten BJ Penn three times. Aldo and Penn never fought, but I’m confident that had they competed with one another, Aldo would have gotten his hand raised. But that’s a discussion for another day.

Getting back to the GOAT discussion, there is no doubt Aldo is top 10 of all time P4P, maybe even top five. The only fighters I would definitely put over him are Anderson Silva, Georges St-Pierre, Jon Jones, and Fedor Emelianenko. There’s also the likes of Randy Couture, Chuck Liddell, Dan Henderson, Royce Gracie, Matt Hughes, Kazushi Sakuraba and the aforementioned Penn, but all of those fighters have a ton of losses on their resumes, and while they have a great number of wins, their losses keep them out of the GOAT top five, at least as far as I’m concerned.

I already think Aldo is arguably top five P4P all-time, but I think he has the potential to be the top guy ever if he moves up to 155 pounds and wins the title there. That’s why Couture is such a legend – because he fought in two weight classes and succeeded in both of them. And I think Aldo could as well, should he go ahead and take the risk of moving up once he cleans out 145 lbs.

Even though he might not feel like a legend in the way a guy like Silva or Fedor does, I feel pretty comfortable putting Aldo that high in the all-time P4P ranks. I think he’s an amazing, incredible mixed martial artist, and when we look back at the sport 20 years from now, we’ll look back and realize he was one of the best to ever play the game.