Veteran former featherweight champion, Jose Aldo may have just made a stark admission — in a rather unfortunate slip of the tongue for the UFC icon this week.
Aldo, who made his subsequent retirement outing last weekend at UFC 315, suffered just his fifth loss at the featherweight limit in his gold-laden Octagon tenure. Dropping a hard-fought, contentious unanimous decision loss against Aiemann Zahabi, Aldo subsequently called time on his Octagon career for good this time.
“The cage has always been my place. The struggle, my life,” Aldo wrote on Instagram. “I’m not going back because I have already fulfilled my purpose-with blood, sweat, discipline, and honor,” he noted.
But this week, it seems Aldo may have been hiding a significant fact about his career in combat sports. Specifically, the Manaus veteran claimed he was fast approaching his 50th birthday — despite the fact that he is billed at 38 years of age.
“I don’t see myself fighting [again],” Aldo said during a presser at Nova Uniao. “When I went back [to the UFC in 2024], it wasn’t for money, it was for a purpose, I had, a calling.I tried doing it and it didn’t work. I gave my all and was happy with everything I’ve achieved,” said Aldo.
“There’s no fight that would make me come back,” Aldo continued. “To put the gi, to spar, or do anything, only in five years. Thank God, I’ll be almost 50 in five years, so there’s no possibility of fighting, there’s no calling,” the former featherweight champion asserted.
And this isn’t the first time Aldo’s age — or apparent lying of such– has been brought to the conversation.
Burns questions Aldo’s actual age
Suffering a disappointing decision loss to Mario Bautista at UFC 307 last year, Aldo was backed to actually win the bout by his Niteroi countryman, Burns.
But during the conversation, the veteran claimed that he believed Aldo was actually one to two years older than billed — reflecting on the time they trained with each other.
“If you saw he (Aldo) just turned 38 not long ago, I’m 38, but I remember we were both… I was 18 years old in Brazil, I was a blue belt,” Burns said on the Show Me The Money podcast.
“And Jose Aldo was kinda, like, 19 to 20 when he moved to Rio, and he was purple belt,” Burns claimed, adding, “Now I’m older than him. I remember when we were blue belt, I was I was 1 or 2 years younger than him”.
“Now I’m older than him. I don’t know what happened, but I’m older than Jose Aldo, I don’t know,” he joked.
Regardless of his age or the new mystery surrounding it — if Aldo is actually older than we think, that only makes his stunning achievements in the UFC even more impressive.
