Chad Mendes says Jose Aldo hasn't evolved.

[The Great Cochrane]

Chad Mendes and Jose Aldo will meet on August 2nd for the Featherweight title live from the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The fight is a rematch from the first fight the two had back in January 2012 in Aldo's home country of Brazil, which saw Aldo knock out Mendes with a knee with just one second left in the first round.

Both fighters were in LA this week to promote the fight, and Mendes recently sat down with Combate.com to discuss his thoughts about Aldo:

Honestly, watching his last fights, I couldn’t see any sign of evolution. He basically bets on what he is good and he’s doing always the same things. I think that this fight will be excited to the fans because of that, since I have completely changed. There are so much things that I’ve learned in the stand up game. Even my Wrestling is better. There was a moment in our first fight that I took him down and I felt a size difference because I was a lot smaller than him at that time but now this difference won’t be that big. I know that I have an athletic capacity to face him equally, possibly higher than his capacity. I feel that my striking, my Jiu-Jitsu and my Wrestling are better now. I feel that I’m now a well rounded martial artist.

Mendes also discussed his chances for the fight, as well as team mate TJ Dillashaw's win over Renan Barao and what it did for Team Alpha Male.

TJ’s win was big for our team. We’ve come too close of winning the title so many times and he pushed us for beyond that limit. That is what we needed. We couldn’t decode the puzzle and TJ was the first able to do it. We can look what happened and do more. We can train in the way that he trained and implement what he did in our camps. I think that we found the recipe to beat them and I want to show this on August 2.

Since his loss to Aldo; Mendes has looked more impressive than ever - going on a 5 fight win streak with 4 of those being by way of KO/TKO. His list of victims includes Darren Elkins, Clay Guida, and most recently Nik Lentz. Where has Aldo has defended his title against Frankie Edgar, The Korean Zombie Chan Sung Jung, and Ricardo Lamas.

Author: Alex Cochrane
Cited source: BJPenn.com

--------------------------------------------------------

Even though TJ pulled out the victory over Renan Barao, Aldo is a much different fighter and is definitely a lot more dangerous.

I still don't like Mendes' chances.