Jose Aldo will need to find a way to limit Rob Font's volume
Jose Aldo has clearly slowed down. However, the former featherweight champion has found new life at bantamweight and is coming off an impressive decision over Pedro Munhoz. He gets another chance to prove that he is a player in the bantamweight division on Saturday. His opponent, Rob Font enters the fight on a four-fight winning streak and is coming off a five-round drubbing of former bantamweight champion Cody Garbrandt.
Against Garbrandt, Font landed 176 significant strikes (7.04 per minute) and absorbed only 63 (2.52 per minute). In many ways, his performance was emblematic of his UFC run in general as he is often a volume striker. For his UFC career, he has averaged 5.58 significant strikes per minute, which ranks 26th among ranked fighters.
This sets up an interesting dynamic against Aldo. The former champion has a pretty clear dividing line on his record. For his career, he is 20-1 when his opponents landed 5.00 or fewer significant strikes per minute. When his opponents have landed over 5.00 per minute, he is 0-5. The following chart shows Aldo’s significant strikes landed per minute (SLpM) and significant strikes absorbed per minute (SApM) for his UFC and WEC career.
The only time Aldo has lost when allowing fewer than 5.00 per minute was the controversial decision against Marlon Moraes. His performance was still strong enough to earn a shot at the bantamweight title.
Font, on the other hand, has only been held under 5.00 significant strikes landed twice in his career. He dropped decisions against both Raphael Assuncao and John Lineker when landing 1.33 and 2.67 per minute respectively. In fights where he has landed more than 5.00 per minute he is 9-1 with his only defeat coming against Munhoz by submission.
Aldo is strong defensively. He has avoided 61% of the significant strike attempts his opponents have thrown, which is above average for a ranked UFC fighter (57%). However, one of Aldo’s key weapons against volume has dropped off considerably as his career has progressed.
Through his first 14 UFC/WEC fights, 20.28% of Aldo’s landed significant strikes were leg strikes. Over his last 12 fights, that proportion has fallen to only 8.75%.
Early in his career, Aldo used his leg kicks to control range and force opponents to fight at his pace. Recently, he has gotten away from that strategy. Of course, he showed against Munhoz that he has other tools to dominate the striking exchanges. Munhoz came into his fight against Aldo with a 5.60 significant strikes landed per minute rate. However, against Aldo, that rate dropped to 5.00. That is still a high level of strike absorption and very near the dividing line for his career. He will likely need to cause a similar decline against Font to take this bout.
Font had the lowest striking output (significant strikes attempted per minute) against Lineker in his third UFC fight. Lineker never scored a knockdown, but it was clear that Font was concerned about his power. Aldo has been more willing to sit down on his power shots late in his career. In theory, this could help keep Font off of him. However, after I detailed this dynamic prior to Font’s fight against Garbrandt, it did not really play out that way.
Over the course of a five-round fight, Font’s volume will be a problem for Aldo. If he can find a way to slow his output, the fight will swing in his favor. That might be easier said than done.