LAS VEGAS, NV - FEBRUARY 02: (L-R) Frankie Edgar punches Jose Aldo during their featherweight title fight at UFC 156 on February 2, 2013 at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Josh Hedges/Zuffa LLC/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images)
In 2013, Jose Aldo successfully defended his featherweight world title against challenger Frankie Edgar with a narrow five-round decision that could have gone either way. Heading into their rematch at UFC 200, however, Aldo has claimed that he handily beat Edgar, back then, and did so with one arm.
"The Answer" thinks that Jose Aldo is just trying to do a Conor McGregor impersonation with some brash hype talk. "Guys are getting more vocal. They're just seeing what it's done for Conor, so they're trying to kind of make their voice heard. I think that's what Aldo is doing," he recently said.
"People are trying to talk. [Aldo is] just not that great at doing it, you know?"
If he had to guess, Edgar surmised that Aldo may also just be trying to psyche himself up after losing in just 13 seconds to McGregor last December. "Everybody bounces back differently, looks at it differently," he continued.
"But no doubt about it, it's got to mess with your psyche, especially when you're as dominant as he has been for the last 10 years, and then, boom, one punch. Literally one punch. Thirteen seconds. And against a guy who gloats. Just the worst guy who could do that to you, did it. That's just got to mess with your head. So, we'll see."
Edgar, who has won five straight fights since losing to Aldo, knows that no one else is buying the idea that their first bout was anything less than a close war. The New Jersey scrapper says that if Aldo believes his own bluster, all he's doing is filling himself with false confidence.
Edgar then took his own shot at Aldo for pulling out of past fights with injuries. "He's just trying to create buzz, and I get what he's trying to do, but we all know he doesn't fight injured," he countered.
"The guy pulls out of fights every other fight, so he definitely doesn't fight injured. So we can just throw that one away. And everybody talks about how our fight was close. He wants to sit there and have this false sense of security? Maybe that's why he's trying to talk like this, because he's dealing with this knockout loss. But, by all means, go ahead and go in there super confident."
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