For Jose Aldo, losing to Conor McGregor at UFC 194 in December 2015 was more than a rough night. The Brazilian had spent years dominating the featherweight division, and his seven-fight winning streak in the UFC came to an abrupt end when McGregor knocked him out with a left hook just 13 seconds into the first round. The UFC later captured the emotional aftermath, releasing locker room footage of Aldo breaking down in tears.

For years, those tears seemed like a natural reaction to one of the most devastating defeats of Aldo’s career. But more than a decade later, the Brazilian, in an interview with Mundo da Luta, has revealed that losing wasn’t what hurt him the most. It was what came next.

“I cried a lot because, in my mind, after I lost, I thought, ‘F—k, there’s going to be a rematch because I was a dominant champion,’” Aldo said. “Up until that point, I was the first and only featherweight champion in history.

“So, in my mind, I thought, ‘There’s going to be a rematch, I’m going to fight him again, and it’s going to be a whole new story. But then Dana comes and tells me that Conor can’t make weight anymore, so they can’t do that fight.”

According to Jose Aldo, he had expected an immediate rematch. After all, he had been the dominant champion, and he believed he would get another chance to prove that the first fight didn’t tell the whole story. Instead, Dana White informed him that Conor McGregor was moving up to lightweight and wouldn’t be returning to featherweight again.

“(Dana White) said he was going to move up to lightweight because it was too difficult for him (featherweight) and he couldn’t do it anymore. It was the last time he was going to make featherweight, win or lose. That’s why I was crying,” he explained. “Everyone thinks I was crying because I lost. No, I was crying because I knew we weren’t going to fight again. There was no way for me to get that win back, you know?”

That changes the way we look at Aldo’s emotional reaction. The Brazilian wasn’t simply coming to terms with a defeat. He was realizing that the opportunity to avenge it might have disappeared before he could even get another fight booked.

And Aldo didn’t quietly accept that outcome. In the aftermath of UFC 194, he made it clear that he wanted another shot against McGregor.

Right after the loss, Aldo told Brazilian MMA outlet Combate that processing the defeat had been difficult. He also revealed that he had pushed Dana White to make the rematch happen.

However, the UFC had other plans for their newly crowned champion.

During a media scrum in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, Aldo recalled that White and former UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta had visited his locker room after the defeat. Rather than promising him a rematch, they urged him to fight Frankie Edgar for the interim featherweight title.

According to the Brazilian MMA legend, they explained that McGregor was moving up to 155 pounds because of his difficulty making the featherweight limit. That was when the Brazilian realized the rematch he had been counting on was effectively “over.”

Aldo has spoken openly about wanting to face McGregor again over the years. However, his latest comments offer a more personal explanation for why the prospect of a rematch meant so much to him. And while the Brazilian never got that second chance, McGregor did briefly suggest that another meeting wasn’t entirely off the table.

Conor McGregor briefly considered a rematch with Jose Aldo

Immediately after his record-breaking knockout win at UFC 194, McGregor approached Aldo, where he appeared to leave the door open for a rematch. At the post-fight press conference, the Irishman explained what he had told his defeated opponent.

“What I said was, ‘Look we can go again.’ Although it’s a nice feeling to get that knockout, it’s kind of not nice because you can see what’s happening around,” McGregor recounted. “You don’t want to see the only champion in the company’s history going out like that.”

It was a brief opening, but McGregor’s plans for the next stage of his career made a rematch difficult to arrange. Rather than immediately returning to featherweight to face Aldo, the Irishman wanted the contenders in the division to fight among themselves while he pursued the lightweight title.

“Maybe, I feel, there’s a couple of contenders in the mix,” McGregor added at the UFC 194 press conference. “Let them maybe compete against each other while I go up and take the lightweight belt, allow a contender to emerge, and go back down and take out that contender and then go back up after a lightweight contender has emerged and take out that contender.”

The Irishman’s ambition was to become a double champion and defend both belts. His immediate target was Rafael dos Anjos, whom he was scheduled to face for the lightweight title at UFC 196. But that fight fell apart after dos Anjos suffered an injury, leaving McGregor to face replacement opponent Nate Diaz in a non-title main event instead.

Aldo, meanwhile, had to move on without the rematch he wanted. He faced Edgar for the interim featherweight title at UFC 200 and won by unanimous decision, putting himself back in position to reclaim the undisputed championship.

Later that year, McGregor defeated Eddie Alvarez to win the lightweight title at UFC 205. The UFC subsequently stripped him of the featherweight championship, and Aldo was elevated from interim to undisputed champion.

That marked the end of McGregor’s reign at 145 lbs and, in all likelihood, Aldo’s last realistic opportunity to settle the score with him inside the Octagon.

Looking back, the knockout itself was only part of the story.

Aldo believed he could return, correct what went wrong, and show that one punch hadn’t erased everything he had accomplished as champion. What he struggled to accept was that McGregor’s move to lightweight took that opportunity away before he could earn it.

And that is what makes Aldo vs. McGregor 2 one of the UFC’s biggest what-ifs. It wasn’t just a rematch fans wanted to see. For Aldo, it was the chance to reclaim something he felt he had lost in just 13 seconds.