UFC 218: Jose Aldo officially set to take on Max Holloway

Featherweight champion Max Holloway officially has a new opponent for his UFC 218 title fight, former champion Jose Aldo.

After an injury to title contender Frankie Edgar, the UFC needed a replacement opponent for featherweight champion Max Holloway at UFC 218. Cub Swanson and Brian Ortega were amongst the names tossed about by pundits but the UFC decided to go with former champion Jose Aldo.

The bout was initially reported by Combate and later confirmed by Ariel Helwani of MMA Fighting.

Aldo steps into this fight on short notice but since Holloway is a familiar foe, Aldo should not have a problem. This will be the second time Aldo and Holloway have fought and it comes in consecutive bouts. Aldo lost the belt to Holloway in June at UFC 212.

While Aldo has lost two of his last three fights, each of those two losses were in UFC featherweight title fights. The first loss was to Conor McGregor at UFC 194 and Aldo won the interim title at UFC 200 by defeating Edgar. Aldo was later promoted to champion after McGregor won the lightweight title at UFC 205 and vacated in the following weeks.

Aldo was originally set to face number three ranked Ricardo Lamas on December 16th at UFC on Fox 26 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. There is no word yet from the UFC on a possible replacement opponent for Lamas as of yet.

The entire UFC 218 fight card to date is as follows:

Main Card

Max Holloway vs. Jose Aldo
Alistair Overeem vs. Francis Ngannou
Henry Cejudo vs. Sergio Pettis
Eddie Alvarez vs. Justin Gaethje
Tecia Torres vs. Michelle Waterson
Preliminary Card
Alex Oliveira vs. Yancy Medeiros
David Teymur vs. Drakkar Klose
Felice Herrig vs. Cortney Casey
Abdul Razak Alhassan vs. Sabah Homasi
Jeremy Kimball vs. Dominick Reyes
Justin Willis vs. Allen Crowder
Amanda Cooper vs. Angela Magaña

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