Shortly after he authored perhaps his best performance since moving
to bantamweight in a unanimous decision triumph over Pedro
Munhoz at UFC 265, Jose Aldo set
his sights on a fellow former champion.
“It would be great for me to fight with [T.J.] Dillashaw,” Aldo
said after his UFC 265 win. “Hopefully by December. I think it
would be a great fight and that’s what we expect. That’s what I’m
expecting right now.”
Dillashaw returned from more than a two-year absence at UFC on ESPN
27, where he captured a contentious split-decision triumph over
Cory
Sandhagen on July 24. While the ex-bantamweight king is open to
a future clash with Aldo, he has some unfinished business he’d like
to handle first.
“Yeah, I like the callout,” Dillashaw said in a recent interview
with Submission Radio.
“I would like to fight Jose Aldo.
He’s a legend of our sport, and we can do it after I get my belt
back.”
That means Dillashaw will have to wait for the winner of the
rematch between Aljamain
Sterling and Petr Yan,
which is rumored for UFC 267 on Oct. 30. The Treigning Lab
representative is quick to point out that he’s been a popular
callout for many UFC fighters.
“I’ve actually been called out I think by every fighter in the, for
sure Top 5, if not Top 10, after they won a fight before I came
back and fought Sandhagen,” Dillashaw said. “I swear every fighter
called me out because it makes sense. I mean, I’m the true champion
of the division, and you’re trying to build your name off me,
thinking that I’ve been out for two years, that I’m coming off all
this drama, that I’m not going to be the same fighter. And
Sandhagen made that mistake, as well, and now he’s having to go
further back to try and get to a title.”
Dillashaw is currently recovering from knee surgery, and then has
designs on facing the Sterling-Yan winner, but if all goes as
planned, he likes Aldo as a potential opponent down the road. Given
the profile of both athletes, it seems like a matchup that would
interest the UFC, as well.
“I mean, just Aldo’s name alone makes it interesting, right?”
Dillashaw said. “Like, I would love that fight. So yeah, maybe it
would be my first fight as champ beause Jose Aldo is a
legend in the sport. I remember him in the WEC before I even had my
first professional fight. He was fighting Urijah (Faber) when I was
training there, so the guy’s been on top of the world for a long
time. So it would be a dope fight.”