Jose Aldo explains how Brazilian crowd will impact Max Holloway

UFC featherweight champion Jose Aldo is currently gearing up for what he hopes will be his first successful title defense as the reigning featherweight champion. In the process of defending his belt for the first time, Aldo is hoping to unify the featherweight and interim featherweight titles.

Ahead of the fight, Aldo’s opponent, UFC interim featherweight champion Max Holloway, got his first taste of the Brazilian crowd at Thursday’s open workouts when the crowd chanted ‘You will die’ in Portuguese. While Holloway had no problem embracing the chant, even going as far as to chant it with the crowd, Jose Aldo thinks come fight night ‘Blessed’ is in for a rude awakening.

He spoke to Combate:

“The f–k he will feed off their energy. He’s going to f—king shit himself. He never fought with that kind of pressure before, man. You can see in his eyes how nervous he gets when the crowd starts to put the pressure on him. It’s all baloney. He doesn’t want to let it show.

“I’ve fought millions of guys and I never felt the need to respond to the crowd or give them any gestures. When a person wants to show all that, they’re so nervous, you don’t even know how much. He’s afraid. He always fought in the USA, where there’s no booing or anything. It’s an important fight in a new place. He’s nervous, anxious.”

While Aldo has stated about that Holloway has “always fought in the USA” that statement isn’t entirely true. While ‘Blessed’ hasn’t fought in Brazil, in his most recent fight he fought Anthony Pettis in Canada to win the interim featherweight title. In addition, Holloway has fought in Saskatchewan Canada, Sweden, and Singapore during his time in the UFC. It is important to mention that in Holloway’s fight in Sweden, he was not the crowd favorite given that he was fighting Swedish fighter Akira Corassani.

on 6/2/2017