Jose’ Aldo Will Defend Title At UFC125 Against Josh Grispi

Added on Oct 29, 2010 by John Petit in

UFC & MMA

As we reported yesterday, The UFC and the WEC will be merged together under the UFC banner. The first WEC fight to take place at a UFC event was to be Jose Aldo defending his title. Today it was announced that Josh Grispi would be the opponent for the fight.

Josh Grispi has been in the WEC since Feb of 2008, and has fought four times. He has finished all four of his opponents before the end of the first round. Most recently he defeated LC Davis by guillotine choke at WEC 49. He has also submitted Jens Pulver, and Mark Hominick. He also has a TKO win of Micah Miller. It was originally assumed that Mark Hominick would be Aldo’s next opponent for his belt, but he apparently has a shoulder injury and will be out till almost mid 2011.

Jose’ Aldo is currently on an eleven fight win streak which includes two title defenses. One was against WEC superstar Uriah Faber, and recently he beat Manny Gamburian via TKO. We first caught wind of the possible merger when it was rumored Aldo was offered a fight against Kenny Florian, but Aldo through his manager said they turned it down. Everyone assumed it was just an one off fight, and the merger of the two organizations.

The fight will be the Co-Main event at UFC 125. The original co-main event was supposed to be Shane Carwin and Roy Nelson. However, that fight was scrapped when Carwin was forced to pull out with a back injury. Carwin is reportedly supposed to go under the knife, and it is not known when he could be back. It has not been decided on, but we are hearing that Roy Nelson would be moved to another card all together.

The WEC/UFC merger should be a smooth transition. Technically speaking Zuffa has done this twice already. The first time being when they purchased PRIDE Fighting, and the second time when they rolled the heavier fighters in the WEC into the proper weight classes in the UFC. According to Dana White, they had always planned on doing this, but now the time was right.