Jose Aldo & Cris Cyborg open up on losses to McGregor & Nunes
Imagine being the best fighter in your division and possibly the best pound for pound fighter in the world. You’ve been so dominate that nobody would ever dare to bet against you. Then one day all of sudden, you lose everything in a matter of seconds. Literally, seconds.
That’s exactly what happened to Jose Aldo and Cris Cyborg.
Aldo reigned over the featherweight division by going unbeaten for a decade, before Conor McGregor needed just 13 seconds to land a straight left hand that dethroned Aldo. Just like Jose Aldo, Cris Cyborg ruled over the women’s featherweight division and was considered the most feared woman on the planet. Amanda Nunes then took everything from Cyborg by knocking her out in 51 seconds.
The two Brazilians sat down on Cyborg’s YouTube channel to discuss how their lives changed after their difficult defeats.
“We never expect to lose — and lose like that,” Aldo said on his UFC 194 loss to McGregor. “It’s a sport and it’s 50-50, of course, it could happen one day. As long as we’re fighting, losing is a possibility, but I was so confident in my head going into this fight. ‘No, I’m super well-prepared, I can’t see how this guy wins.’ For everything that was said and everything that was going on, my team and I were positive that we would get there and defeat him. And that’s not what happened.”
Aldo had doubts on his chin following the fight. In his fight first fight after the loss, Aldo defeated Frankie Edgar at UFC 200 for the interim title. He says he fought smart and tried not to take any risks in the fight. In the months following the win, Aldo would be promoted to undisputed champ when the UFC stripped McGregor.
“Right after that I said, ‘no, I’m the champion, that was only one fact that will never happen again in my life. That’s why I have to train twice as hard, see the mistakes I made and never make them again,’” Aldo said.
Aldo’s next title reign wasn’t as long as his first. He would lose his belt to Max Holloway and then Holloway beat Aldo again in an immediate rematch. Both losses were third-round TKO’s.
Cyborg wasn’t too hard on herself following in loss to Nunes at UFC 232. Her camp for the fight lasted nine months and during the camp she switched managers. While the camp was chaotic, Cyborg still didn’t face any problems in camp and she felt confident ahead of the fight.
“I think that’s something wrong when there are no problems in my camp because I always have a problem in my camp and that motivates me,” Cyborg said. “I trained nine months for that fight and had so much stress around me. It’s not an excuse, but I acted emotionally in the fight. It’s not what I trained, I acted emotionally. … We never think we’re going to lose in the first round. You say ‘I’ll give my all, I’ll go until the end, and if they defeat me, I’m going until the end.’ That’s what we think.”
The worst moment for Cyborg following the loss came when she showered before heading to the post fight press conference.
“You take a shower by yourself and that flash comes in your head all the time, and then you start to question (yourself),” Cyborg added. “One side says something, the other side says something else. There’s a fight inside your head every time you take a shower. The week after that fight was a difficult moment.”
Following the loss, Cyborg defeated Felicia Spencer in her last UFC fight and then moved to Bellator where she defeated Juila Budd for the Bellator featherweight championship.
Neither Cris Cyborg or Jose Aldo received rematches. McGregor moved onto heavier weight classes and Aldo now has dropped down to bantamweight. Nunes however still holds the UFC featherweight championship and Cyborg would like a cross-promotion fight to rematch Nunes.
“It’s not a dream, it’s a goal in MMA, to do something different,” Cyborg said. “A super fight between the Bellator champion and the UFC champion, Amanda Nunes and I. I think it would help MMA a lot.”
