Joe Rogan explains why he believes Jose Aldo’s legacy will always be tarnished

Jose Aldo is one of the pound-for-pound best fighters on the planet, and really, one of the best fighters of all time. No matter how you feel about him, there’s really no denying these things.

In the opinion of UFC commentator Joe Rogan, however, Aldo’s legacy as one of the best ever will always be tarnished by one thing: his 13-second, 2015 knockout loss to Conor McGregor. Though Aldo has since regained the undisputed featherweight title that he lost to McGregor that night (he did so without avenging his loss to McGregor), that knockout loss stands out as the one blip in an otherwise dominant career.

Rogan explained why he feels this loss tarnishes Aldo’s legacy on a recent Fight Companion episode of his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience. His words (transcription via MMAFighting.com):

“Aldo’s legacy and his reign is always gonna be tarnished by that 13 seconds against McGregor. Which is so crazy because you take away that fight and he’s got one brutal war with Chad Mendes where he got rocked and stunned, which is a tough fight – the second one – great fight. And those are the only hard moments he’s had inside the octagon other than maybe round five against Ricardo Lamas. Lamas had him down and was doing a little bit of ground and pound in the fifth round and that was Aldo was too drained making that weight, but he’s smaller now. He generally looks smaller. He definitely chose to slim down because he was having unbelievably brutal weight cuts early in his career. He was just too big for the weight class so he just chose to slim his body down.”

Do you agree with these comments from Joe Rogan? Where do you think Jose Aldo ranks on the all-time greats list?

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 5/31/2017.