Jose Aldo Regrets UFC 153 Withdrawal, Still Wants to Fight Frankie Edgar

On Tuesday afternoon, during practice at Nova Uniao headquarters in Rio de Janeiro, the athlete was forced to stop his training due to intense pain in his right foot, which was injured during a motorcycle accident just over one week ago. Team leader Andre Pederneiras immediately vetoed the fight against Edgar and informed the UFC of the development.

“It’s been almost 10 days since Aldo’s motorcycle accident and he had improved greatly. His injuries had already healed almost completely, but his right foot was very swollen. Today, during his first sparring workout, he couldn’t plant his right foot because of the pain,” Pederneiras told Sherdog.com on Tuesday. “Because of his and our overwhelming desire that this fight against Edgar would happen, we tried to push it a bit, but we talked after practice and saw that he wasn’t able to train for the fight. We would like the fight [to be] postponed but the opponent kept.”

Aldo, who would have competed for the second time in Rio de Janeiro as UFC champion, regretted the incident.

“I apologize to my fans for not being able to fight at UFC 153, something I really wanted. It was a huge thrill to defend this belt at the last event in the city, and it would be even more wonderful to do it again now, against an opponent like Frank Edgar,” said Aldo. “I tried everything until the last second to be inside the Octagon, but it didn’t happen. Hopefully the UFC keeps the opponent and postpones this meeting, because I really want to face him.”