Rob Font is confident he has the answers to Jose Aldo’s game; he just wasn’t able to put them together in the UFC on ESPN 31 main event.
Font (19-5 MMA, 9-4 UFC) had his winning streak snapped Saturday when he suffered a unanimous decision loss to Aldo (31-7 MMA, 13-6 UFC) in the bantamweight headliner at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas. He had a strong start to the fight, but once his opponent started to find his range, it went downhill.
Aldo’s power proved to be the difference inside the octagon. He dropped Font twice over the course of 25 minutes, and any time Font started to gain some momentum, a hard shot would swing the action back the other way.
The strikes created a lot of damage around Font’s eye, and he said it compromised his vision to the point he struggled to see what was coming. If that didn’t happen, Font thinks it’d have been a different fight.
“He caught me with some clean shots I didn’t see, and it was hard to see that extra third and fourth shot with my eye all swollen up,” Font said during his in-cage interview with Daniel Cormier after the fight. “But the guy’s a legend. He’s tough. I feel I can beat him, but it just wasn’t my night. Hat’s off to him.”
Although he’s disappointed with the outcome, Font said he’s able to take positives away from the experience.
Going the distance with Aldo will provide nothing but valuable lessons to Font as he moves forward with his career, and even in the immediate aftermath of the fight, he was wise enough to realize the result will benefit him in the long run.
“I’ll be back,” Font said. “I know for a fact this will make me better, and I just went five rounds with one of the legends in the sport, and I’m going to get better off of this fight, for sure.
