Jose Aldo Will Attempt To Train Tuesday, Jonas Bilharinho Believes He Will Fight
With the mixed martial arts (MMA) world waiting on pins and needles to see if UFC featherweight champion Jose Aldo will face his bitter rival Conor McGregor in the main event of July 11’s UFC 189 from Las Vegas, one of his Nova Uniao training partners said we may know as soon as Tuesday (June 30, 2015).
Speaking up on today’s edition of The MMA Hour, Aldo’s stable mate Jonas Bilharinho, who was brought into camp to mimic McGregor’s unorthodox striking, said that the decorated champion will try to train tomorrow in an effort to see where he’s at heading into the fight, which is still tentatively on:
“I think he will probably fight. And I hope so. I will be with him on Tuesday to see what he’s capable of doing during training or not, but my opinion right now is that he’s going to fight. I’m going to be optimistic about it because Aldo wants this fight so bad. I think this fight will probably happen.”
Although Bilharinho believes Aldo will most likely fight, that will come down to the medical diagnosis of his injured rib, which conflicting reports have said was bruised and then officially broken. According to the multi-division Jungle Fight champ, Aldo was in a ton of pain last week and hardly able to walk. Once again, however, he reiterated his belief that the fight was probably going to happen:
“He was walking slowly to not feel the pain on the ribs,” he said. “It’s disturbing. You can’t punch, you can’t move, you can’t breathe, but the pain was still fresh. I don’t know right now. It’s probably better. If the pain got worse, he will probably don’t fight. But I think the fight is going to happen. I don’t think it will get any worse.
“It’s a little bit painful but there are some kinds of pain that we can hold during fights and there are some kinds of pain that we can’t hold. I hope that it’s one of the ones that we can hold. We will test him on Tuesday. Tuesday is the big day.”
With tomorrow penciled in as the big day, Bilharinho said that if Aldo decides to fight, pain would not be an issue. He also focused on the stance that if McGregor thinks Aldo has never fought someone like him, he’s got another thing coming because ‘Junior’ is the better fighter:
“He’s very strong mentally. Once he decides to fight, the pain won’t be a problem,” he said. “I know he can beat Conor. He totally can beat Conor.
“Conor never fought someone like Aldo. Conor keeps saying ‘oh, he never fought someone like me’. Okay, but neither did him fight someone like Aldo. And he’s way more different than people who Conor fought. Aldo is so much better. I really want to see this fight. If he thinks he can fight, he should fight.”
