Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) featherweight titleholder Jose Aldo recently admitted that he was trying to "spice things up" for his upcoming rematch against Chad Mendes by shoving "Money" during their first staredown.
Those comments, however, were made right after Aldo declared that his push was ultimately a real, spur of the moment incident. This, despite the fact that he and his team had discussed ways to promote the rematch, which goes down at UFC 179 on Oct. 25, 2014 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Now, UFC President Dana White is trying to explain those rather confusing comments by confirming that the incident was 100-percent legit and that everything Aldo said was simply lost in translation.
His words on The Download:
"So the Aldo-Mendes thing, this has happened before, Aldo said, ‘that's not what I said.' He said he didn't fake it, the push was real. But every time they say something in Portuguese and it gets translated into English - I got a call that [Renan] Barao had come out and said he wasn't being paid enough money. So we called him, and he told me he never said that - it gets mixed up in translation."
Still, that doesn't mean that White was pleased with the shenanigans.
According to the outspoken president, fighters like Aldo -- who are already great at fighting and got to where they are on their skills -- don't need to talk or engage in other stuff to promote a fight.
In other words, stick to what got you to the big show.
In Dana's assessment, not everyone is cut out for the trash talk game like Chael Sonnen and Conor Mcgregor, two men with the gift of gab who have proven they can draw interest for an event by talking up a good storm prior to backing it all up inside the cage.
"I think that guys just shouldn't try. Chael had it. Conor McGregor has it. This guy can fight and talk. I think some of the guys that can't talk as well as others think they have to talk more. No you don't. You need to be a great fighter. As long as you're a great fighter, nobody gives a s--t about that other stuff. Yes, some guys may stand out a little more, but if you have the talent you're going to get where you want to go anyway."
For the record, Aldo did say that trying to garner interest by trash talking or engaging in other pre-fight hype wasn't his style and promised that an incident like that would never happen again.
And his boss, for one, approves.