UFC 315: Jose Aldo is still here, but for what purpose?

Yahoo

09-05-2025

For anyone who has followed the game long enough, there's a tinge of sadness to seeing Jose Aldo on this weekend's UFC 315 card, and not just because he had a hard time whittling his form down to 135 pounds for his fight with Aiemann Zahabi. It's more because he's fighting Zahabi at all. Shouldn't the original Lord of the Flies be paired against a fellow twilight idol? Some name that checks a box for his legacy, which just keeps stretching off into weirder and weirder ways like so much taffy?
Ordinary fighters can be found chasing greatness at the end of their careers. To look at Aldo's matchmaking, you might think he's the rare example of a great fighter seeking ordinariness down the stretch. Fighting his way back into the woodwork, as it were.
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There was a time, back in April of 2011, when the UFC assembled the greatest cast of champions we'd ever likely see on a single stage. It was a media conference just before UFC 129 at the Rogers Centre in Toronto, which itself would shatter the UFC's attendance record by bringing in more than 55,000 paid spectators a couple of days later.
It was the most glorious example of men in blazers, if not the most terrifying.
Here's the group of champions that appeared that day, all of them dressed to the nines sans ties: Dominick Cruz (bantamweight champ), Jose Aldo (featherweight), Frankie Edgar (lightweight), Georges St-Pierre (welterweight), Anderson Silva (middleweight), Jon Jones (light heavyweight), and Cain Velasquez (heavyweight).
Perhaps the most talented group of UFC champions in history. (Al Bello/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images)
(Al Bello via Getty Images)
I can remember debating media members on hand over which one among that omnipotent pantheon would lose first. It was a true head-scratcher. People puzzled over that because all of them seemed so far ahead of their respective classes. It was extremely hard to imagine any of them losing anytime soon. Pardon the pun, but Edgar was the answer, as he'd had an epic fight with Gray Maynard to kick off the year and there was a rematch looming. Aldo, who had a scar running down the side of his face and a perma-scowl acquired in childhood, was particularly untouchable.
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If you want to understand where the fight game leads, cut forward 14 years and 186 pay-per-views to our present day, all the way to UFC 315, which is happening just a province over in Quebec on Saturday night. I'll warn you, this portion of the column might be a little depressing, but in putting Aldo's quiet swing bout against Zahabi in perspective, a depressing big picture makes the smaller one feel better.
Of those aforementioned champions, not many are left. In fact, only two are (theoretically) still going — Aldo and Jones. Dominick Cruz fought just 10 times over the ensuing 14 years, and retired earlier this year after withdrawing from his fight with Rob Font with a shoulder injury. Injuries came to define his career as much as his ability to bewitch opponents with his movement.
Edgar did defend his lightweight title in the trilogy with Maynard, but went 10-10 in the UFC after that great day. He was fed to Chris Gutierrez in his retirement fight at UFC 281 at Madison Square Garden, in one of the most depressing swan songs on record. The picture of his face turning to putty only added to the cruel nature of the sendoff.
Of the group mentioned, St-Pierre got out on his own terms. He won that weekend against Jake Shields to retain his title and defended it three more times before going up a weight class and taking Michael Bisping's middleweight strap. He vacated that a month later, and these days is happily studying UFOs and the elasticity of consciousness, all with a full head of hair.
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Anderson Silva? He went just 4-7 (1 NC) after that gathering, losing his title dramatically to Chris Weidman and breaking his leg in the rematch. It was a slow fade, which ended with a TKO loss to Uriah Hall. Or did it? He tried some boxing, where he ended up on Jake Paul's casualty list. There's always a chance Andy shows back up at some point.
Jon Jones? We're still waiting on "Bones." He's the fully disputed heavyweight champ. But he's remarkably the only one who could still appear on a stage of champions like that.
And Cain Velasquez? Tragic, bubba, just tragic. He went 5-3 after that day, losing and regaining his title. He got brutally knocked out by Francis Ngannou at the end, and is now serving a five-year sentence in Santa Clara County in a well-publicized shooting incident. (#FreeCainVelasquez.)
Which brings us back around to Aldo, who is coming off a split decision loss against Mario Bautista. Before then he won against Jonathan Martinez. At a time when most champions from his era are long retired and/or in the UFC's Hall of Fame, Aldo is still slipping into plastic suits trying to cut the last of the stubborn weight for fights against middle-of-the-pack bantamweights.
Jose Aldo failed to make the bantamweight limit on Friday in Montreal. (Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC)
(Jeff Bottari via Getty Images)
The million-dollar question is: Why?
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What does a victory against Zahabi this weekend get him, especially now that it's switched to a featherweight fight? Aldo will turn 39 in four months, and he's fighting guys as if he's trying to build a contender's résumé. Perhaps he is trying to position himself for one last title run, but having gone 4-5 in his last nine, with eight of those coming at 135 pounds, that feels like a stretch.
Recently, when discussing his decision to retire after his UFC 317 trilogy with Max Holloway and a 15-year run in the UFC, Dustin Poirier laid out the basics in a way that just about everyone can understand. He didn't want to have to work his way back to a title shot. Didn't want to have to win three in a row, and go through three different camps, and say "so long" to his family for six weeks at a time, just to get that shot. He didn't want to be a fight game Sisyphus anymore.
Aldo was already a champion. He held the title for six years across the WEC and the UFC. He fought on that card in Toronto, put the Looney Tunes lump on Mark Hominick's head in front of 55,000 people. He is already a member of the UFC Hall of Fame, class of '23. He's considered the greatest featherweight of all time, even if people want to argue Alexander Volkanovski's credentials.
And yet he continues to fight. In a way, that's what makes Aldo the marvel of yesterday's champions. The fact that his 'why' isn't known, perhaps even to himself. Should he have been Dominick Cruz's last fight? Would a fight with Henry Cejudo make sense?
Those fights would've been fun. But you get the sense Aldo isn't humming along to anyone else's swan song — and as for his own, it's still being written.