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Nova Uniao head coach Andre
Pederneiras believes Brazilian greats Rafael dos
Anjos, Jose Aldo and
Patricio
Freire will cement their statuses as all-time greats soon. Right after return from Las Vegas with dos Anjos, “Dede”
Pederneiras spoke with Sherdog about his first experience in the
corner of the former Ultimate Fighting Championship lightweight
champion. Aware that dos Anjos was now the #6 ranked lightweight
according to the UFC
rankings, Pederneiras did not like the idea of dos Anjos as an
alternate for the
recently formalized Conor
McGregor–Dustin
Poirier rematch.
“If UFC offers that, [dos Anjos] is the one who should choose, but
I don’t think that would be a nice idea. I have no doubt that
Rafael is coming to fight for the belt, so he doesn’t need to hurry
for that”, said Pederneiras, before recalling everything the
athlete went through for that fight. “Definitely his body needs to
rest at least 15 days. He passed through crazy stuff in that camp.
First, he trained five weeks to fight three rounds against a
southpaw elite grappler [Islam
Makhachev], where [he] would need to keep the fight standing
up. In the middle of the camp, he got COVID-19 with very strong
symptoms. Twenty days later, he recovered and returned to train for
the same opponent. But five days before the fight, the southpaw
grappler was substituted by an elite right-handed striker in a
five-round main event, [totally] changing the strategy. That was
crazy!”
The Carlson Gracie black belt continued, giving props to Paul Felder
as one of the best strikers in the division, saying, “Paul could
give a hard time to any of the top 5 in a stand-up fight and Rafael
exchanged blows with him for five rounds. Definitely [dos Anjos]
deserves a physical and mental rest.”
Even being very happy with the great partnership with dos Anjos,
Pederneiras was not sure if the former champ would do his next camp
in Nova Uniao.
“I truly hope so,” Pederneiras wished. “But that’s his decision.
Every time Rafael comes to Brazil, he brings wife and kids in a
gigantic change that costs a lot. He is the one who needs to
evaluate, but for the Nova Uniao side, he will be always very
welcome.”
Dos Anjos came to the camp to train with Aldo ahead of their bouts.
Aldo will be taking on Marlon Vera
on Dec. 19 at the year-end UFC card. Put simply, “Dede” believes
that Aldo will knock Vera out.
“Vera is such a dangerous fighter, but I see Aldo is getting more
adapted to the division each month,” Pederneiras admitted. “He is
punching hard and I believe he will [get a] knockout this
time.”
While Aldo is not the champion of any division right now and has
moved to bantamweight, Pederneiras still fully believes that Aldo
is the greatest featherweight to ever compete. One fighter that
could one day challenge Aldo’s legacy is not even on the UFC
roster: Bellator MMA two-division champ Freire. “Pitbull”
recently scored a first-round knockout of Pedro
Carvalho at Bellator 252 to advance to the featherweight grand
prix semifinals.
“For everything [Freire] is doing in two categories in Bellator, I
think he is the best featherweight in the [sport], period,” the
Nova Uniao patriarch stated. “But when we talk about legacy, I see
Aldo ahead of him. Of course, if he keeps doing what he is doing,
one day, he might be the GOAT of featherweight division, but now
Aldo is still the king.”
Other Brazilian fighters are moving up the rankings, including
rising bantamweight and ex-Nova Uniao fighter Raoni
Barcelos. Even though Aldo and Barcelos both compete in the
same division and Barcelos is on his way up, Pederneiras was quick
to dismiss a future matchup between the two.
“I also see Raoni with great chances in that division, but [as long
as] Aldo and Raoni don’t have the belt, I really don’t see the
possibility of them facing each other,” Pederneiras declared.
“There are many possibilities in the bantamweight division.
Furthermore, UFC is not like Bellator where the category champion
must face the [grand prix] champion and we needed to accept by
contract a Nova Uniao fight between Marcos
Galvao and Eduardo
Dantas. We don’t need to do the same in UFC.”
The bantamweight divisions are flourishing in both the UFC and
Bellator at the moment. This gives a longtime coach like
Pederneiras hope.
“There are a lot of possibilities out there”, Pederneiras concluded
optimistically.
