Andre Pederneiras Points to Greatest Highs and Lows of Jose Aldo’s Career

Andre Pederneiras, coach of Ultimate Fighting Championship great Jose Aldo, had a few thoughts on his fighter’s legacy.

After his loss to Aiemann Zahabi at UFC 315, Hall of Famer Jose Aldo decided to hang up his gloves. A decision certainly motivated by suffering three defeats in his last four appearances—with two of them controversially scored. The Brazilian received ample criticism at how the twilight of his career had been handled, with faithful fans objecting to his acceptance of three opponents who made little sense from a legacy perspective. Pederneiras revealed to Sherdog that he always made the decisions on taking fights alongside Aldo and his wife Viviane.

“First, I need to explain what goes through Aldo’s head,” the Nova Uniao coach explained. “There is no such thing as fighting just for the sake of fighting, fighting to get the check and go home. For Aldo, the only thing that made sense was to keep fighting to get the belt. After the loss to Merab [Dvalishvili] at UFC 278, the offers we received from the UFC were not good enough to get him into a title fight, and since former champions [Henry] Cejudo and Dominick [Cruz] were unavailable due to injuries, all we could do was accept the ranked athletes, and that’s what we did.”

Count “Dede” among those who disagreed with the result of the Zahabi fight. Despite that, he felt that Aldo was planning on retiring at night’s end, win or lose.

“I was almost certain that this would happen regardless of victory or defeat,” Pederneiras projected.

Even though Aldo left his gloves in the center of the Octagon, it is not the first time he has retired. The vaunted coach is not entirely certain that this retirement will stick either.

“It’s hard to say that a guy of Aldo’s caliber doesn’t think about coming back because he comes here to my gym and beats the crap out of everyone. It’s hard to take a guy of Aldo’s level and think that one day he’ll wake up and say, you know what, I’m going back there. Obviously, he will turn 39 this year, and as time goes by, the dynamics change, especially in the lighter divisions where speed, cardio and strength have such an important role,” Pederneiras offered.

When asked about the greatest joy, sadness and emotion he has experienced alongside his main champion, the coach did not need long to come up with answers.

“The greatest joy was when he fought for the UFC title with Mark Hominick in Canada with 55,000 people shouting against him and he won the belt; the greatest emotion was when he beat Jeremy Stephens after two losses, I had to hold back tears,” he admitted. “And obviously, the greatest sadness was when he took that punch from [Conor] McGregor after months of promotion. Both threw the punch at the same time and landed. But Conor got there first and in a better position. If Aldo had gotten there first, the one who would have been on the ground would have been Conor, but God wanted it that way.”

Going over the career of his pupil made the Nova Uniao founder wistful, who noted that next year, it will be his third decade as a manager and coach.

“I am the longest-serving coach and manager in the UFC, since I took Rafael Carino to the UFC in 1996. Next year will be 30 years,” the coach remarked.

With so much time in the game, and so many great fighters to come and go through his doors, it is impossible to ignore Pederneiras’ achievements. However, he does not want to be placed on a pedestal, nor did he wish to compare his legacy to other renowned coaches like Carlson Gracie, Rudimar Fedrigo and Abdulmanap Nurmagomedov.

The coach was more than willing to boast about his fighters’ accomplishments, however, saying, “I don’t know about the numbers of other trainers, but I did 15 world champions: Vitor Ribeiro, Marlon Sandro, Eduardo Dantas, Jose Aldo, Renan Barao, Willamy Freire, Thales Leites, Alexandre Pantoja, Bruno Azevedo, Luis Ramos>, Hernani Perpetuo, Poliana Botelho, Felipe Froes, Werlleson Martins, Wagnney Fabiano. To date, my athletes have fought for the UFC title 20 times and won 12 times. We lost eight. In total, in world events, Nova Uniao has fought for or put at stake 62 world titles and won 41 times, we lost 19 and drew twice.”