Jose Aldo is quickly becoming one of the most interesting fighters in the UFC.
He is deeply dissatisfied within the organisation, and has not been shy about voicing his concerns. While some of this is general disillusionment with not being given the fights he wants, it appears he has also taken against the running of the organisation, and the position the fighters have within it.
Such his level of disenchantment, Aldo said last month that he would seek to cancel his contract with the UFC, after he was overlooked for a rematch with Conor McGregor:
After all this, I see I can’t trust any word from president Dana White, and who’s in charge of the promotion now is Conor McGregor. Since I’m not here to be an employee of McGregor, today I ask to cancel my contract with the UFC.
When they offered me a fight with Frankie Edgar, Dana said that the winner would challenge McGregor or win the linear title, that he would lose his belt if he didn’t return to the featherweight division after his rematch with Nate Diaz. After being fooled so many times, I don’t feel motivated to fight in the UFC anymore.
White played the incident down, saying that Aldo was "emotional".
While some of the threats to quit may just be posturing on Aldo's part, he has campaigned for change within the organisation in the past, and has been vocal in his support for the formation of a fighters' union. Aldo has said that a union would give athletes "more privileges", calling on his fellow fighters to be less "disunited".
Aldo has now revealed, via MMA Fighting, that the issue became a topic of conversation between he and White. The latter made a quite remarkable threat in encouraging Aldo to forget about it. Here are Aldo's quotes:
Not only now that I’m the one being affected, but I always talked about it and defended better things for Brazilian athletes.
In a conversation, Dana himself came and told me not to take anyone’s sides because the cake would be split the same for everyone, but I could get a bigger slice if I stayed quiet.
The fact that the highest-ranked can get pretty rich by looking after number one at the expense of others is no surprise, and the fact White would take about a potential union in such terms is not entirely surprising either.
For more background on the contracts that fighters are tied to, we recommend you read this.
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