Jose Aldo: still a class above

MMA is a young man's game, but everyone is too scared to tell that to Jose Aldo.

On September 18th of 2023, Jose Aldo announced his retirement from professional MMA, just a few weeks after an uninspired loss to top bantamweight contender Merab Dvalishvili. It was hardly the best way to close out a legendary fighting career, one which spanned 20 years, two major promotions, and three world championships. But it was far from the worst. It is the way of things in combat sports. Time and again, we watch great fighters turn into old great fighters, and then into just old fighters. Young guns use what juice the old dogs have left to bolster their names, and then take their places. This is not the Jose Aldo era any longer; this era belongs to men like Merab Dvalishvili.

But Jose Aldo is still playing his part in it, continuing to add to a legacy that will almost certainly go down as the greatest in the history of this sport.

Neutralizing threats

Last weekend, Aldo made his return to the Octagon to face Jonathan Martinez, a ranked contender riding a six-fight win streak, in the co-main event of UFC 301. Aldo is 37 years old and, though he had spent the interim in and out of the boxing ring, it had been nearly a year and a half since his erstwhile retirement bout.

His return fight started, appropriately, with a display of defense. It is a common critique of long-reigning champions that the task of defending the belt results in an increasingly defensive style, but in Aldo’s case the role revealed him as easily the best defender in MMA history. He was always difficult to take down—damn near impervious to wrestling in his heyday—but it was only over the course of his long reign as featherweight champ that Aldo developed the keen striking defense which remains a cornerstone of his game to this day.

This time around, there was a very specific defensive concern. Jonathan Martinez is a devastating low kicker. Just six months ago he crushed the hopes (and calf muscles) of top prospect Adrian Yanez, needing little more than those low kicks to end the fight less than halfway through the second round.

So Aldo started the fight with some pressure, to make it harder for Martinez to set up his kicks, and got to checking them early.

Not much to say about that. Martinez kicks, and Aldo simply aks his shin if he’d like to make a friend. It is not surprising that this worked to neutralize Martinez’s best weapon; checking works! What is surprising is how few fighters not named Jose Aldo bother to invest the time necessary to do it.

See, defense is difficult in MMA. A boxer whining to an MMA fighter about how hard it is to slip punches would be a lot like a skinny chick complaining to her chunky friend about the four pounds she gained last month. Mixed martial artists have a staggering diversity of threats to contend with—everything a boxer has to worry about plus everything a kickboxer has to worry about plus wrestling and grappling and… you get the picture. It ain’t easy to develop good defense in this game.

But it is worth it. All the more so when you consider that your average opponent is not going to be hitting you with every move in the big book of MMA. Fighters have styles, preferences. Jonathan Martinez is a low kicker—and not one with a particularly deep bag of set-ups. That’s why those low kicks largely disappeared from the fight once Aldo had checked a few. But just look at the havoc calf kicks have wrought in the MMA world over the last few years. And no one is checking them!

Aldo’s reaction times aren’t what they used to be. He’s easier to hurt. Even his once-flawless takedown defense has taken a few hits since he moved down to bantamweight. But he is still one of the very best defensive fighters in the sport and that, perhaps more than anything else, is what keeps him competitive at the top.

Building the attack

With Martinez’s primary long-range weapon taken care of, Aldo moved on to building his initiative. Martinez came in prepared to fight out of the southpaw stance—and Aldo convinced him to stay that way, launching his own legendary low kicks whenever Martinez toyed with the idea of switching. As a result, the bout was defined by the lead handfight between Aldo’s left hand and Martinez’s right.

But while Martinez got stuck playing patty-cake, Aldo was constantly on the lookout for openings. Here, he suckers Martinez into a steady rhythm in order to surprise him with a sudden, off-beat attack.