Jose Aldo: Floyd Mayweather boxing match 'could go down in Saudi Arabia'

It appears Jose Aldo already has something in the works beyond his fight this Saturday at Gamebred Boxing 4.

The former UFC and WEC featherweight champion says he’s in negotiations to fight boxing star Floyd Mayweather in Saudi Arabia sometime in the near future. Aldo, who recently retired from MMA to compete in boxing, will make his second professional boxing appearance on Saturday as he takes on former UFC rival Jeremy Stephens.

Aldo is focused on Stephens but said a boxing match against Mayweather is already in the works.

“Yeah, we’ve been negotiating that fight for a good while,” Aldo told reporters Thursday at the Gamebred Boxing 4 pre-fight news conference in Milwaukee through an interpreter. “Floyd already knows about the fight. I first need to think about my fight this Saturday, and then I can see what’s going to happen. But yeah, we’ve been in negotiations for a long time, and that fight could go down in Saudi Arabia.

“So yeah, it’s all true. We’re going to do the work on Saturday, and after that we’ll sit down again with everyone to book the fight.”

Gamebred Boxing 4 goes down at Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee and streams on UFC Fight Pass pay-per-view for $49.99. A bout between boxing legend Roy Jones Jr. and former UFC lightweight champion Anthony Pettis headlines the card.

This is Aldo’s second professional boxing fight since putting an end to his UFC career in September 2022. He defeated Emmanuel Zambrano by unanimous decision in his boxing debut back in February in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

“This is my second fight, and I had already been training boxing for a long time, more or less since I made the drop to bantamweight,” Aldo said.  “I’ve had much more emphasis on boxing. So when I stopped my (MMA) career, it’s been almost a year just training boxing. I want to see how far I can go. This is the second fight. I want to defeat Jeremy and then take the next step in my boxing career.”

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