After winning the UFC Featherweight title at UFC 194, Conor McGregor is now a wanted man in both the lightweight and featherweight divisions. Given the amount of publicity and mainstream attention that Conor McGregor generates, a fight against him is big business. Financially speaking, the best example to demonstrate this is with Chad Mendes. When Chad fought Ricardo Lamas in April of this year he earned $48,000 for a main-event slot. When he fought Conor McGregor in July at UFC 189 he earned $500,000. Nearly a ten-fold increase in revenue. Now that Conor is the Featherweight Champion, after knocking the pound for pound best fighter in the world out in thirteen seconds, a fight against him is probably the most lucrative fight available in the UFC right now. Naturally so, a lot of fighters want it, there are three fighters who have their names in the hat for the next crack at the Notorious. They include Frankie Edgar, Rafael Dos Anjos and Nate Diaz. In this article I will look at the case for the Frankie Edgar fight.
Frankie Edgar is the former UFC Lightweight Champion who moved down to the featherweight division in 2013 following two consecutive defeats to Benson Henderson. Edgar's first opponent at 145 was the champion Jose Aldo. Frankie managed to take Aldo the five rounds but came up short in the judges decision. Since then Frankie has cleaned out the featherweight division on his way back to a title shot. He fought Charles Oliviera in July 2013. After that fight he took a year out to became a coach on the nineteenth season of the Ultimate Fighter against coach B.J Penn. In July 2014, Edgar defeated former lightweight & welterweight champion B.J Penn by way of a third round TKO in their third meeting. Edgar won so decisively that Penn retired straight after the fight.
Next for Edgar was Cub Swanson in Austin, Texas. Swanson was in the top five contention for a shot at Jose Aldo at the time. He hadn't lost in the octagon in over two and a half years. In that time he defeated top contenders such as Dustin Poirier, Dennis Siver, Jeremy Stephens and Charles Oliviera. A win against Edgar would have set him up nicely for a second fight against Jose Aldo. Edgar managed to dominate Swanson over five rounds and finally submitted him in the dying seconds of their fifth round fight. The momentum was now in Edgar's favor and a title shot was looming for him. However a couple of months previous, Conor McGregor had knocked out Dustin Poirier in 97 seconds, in January of this year, Conor knocked out Dennis Siver which meant that he was given the title shot over Frankie Edgar. In the mean time Frankie fought Uriah Faber in Manilia, Philippines. Frankie won on the judges scorecards.
When Jose Aldo pulled out of UFC 189 with a rib injury, the UFC decided to save the card by having Conor fight Chad Mendes for the interim featherweight belt. Frankie was quite vocal at the time about getting that fight, even now he still posts on Instagram about how Conor had the choice to fight either him or Chad and how he chose Chad out of fear. With Conor winning the fight against Mendes, it meant that he would still be in line to face Aldo next. This meant a new date had to be set far enough in the future for Aldo to recover from his rib injury. The date set was for December 2015 at UFC 194. To round off the year, the UFC announced two extras shows for the Thursday and Friday night of the same week. Edgar fought Chad Mendes in the main event of the Ultimate Fighter Finale which was held on the Friday night. For Frankie to earn a shot at the belt, he would have to do something incredible. Frankie did just that and managed to knock out Chad Mendes in the very first round.
Usually for a champion after they are defeated to earn an instant rematch for the belt, the first fight needs to have been close. The fact that Aldo was knocked out after thirteen seconds in the second exchange of the fight means that he probably won't get an instant rematch against McGregor. A fighter needs to take a few months to recover from being knocked out unconscious before they can even even look at basic sparring, let alone training for another championship fight. Given the fact that both Edgar and McGregor took little or no damage in their fights, they would make sense to both fight next.
There are two issues preventing this fight from happening, the first is is McGregor's weight situation, the second is Conor's desire to be a two weight champion at once. Despite never coming in over weight, making the 145lbs limit for featherweight is a tough task for Conor. His big advantage at featherweight is that he is physically so big for the weight class. All his opponents are all usually around three to five inches shorter than him. Conor physically has to dehydrate himself in order to make the weight, something that can have massive health implications in both the short and long term. To help him make the weight safely he has recruited the help of nutritionist George Lockhart to assist him with both the cut and the re-hydration after. However Conor's time at featherweight is limited.
The two pictures below demonstrate the difference in physique when Conor is at his healthy walking around weight of approx. 170lbs on the left, and when he weighs in at 145lbs on the right.
As a physically smaller athlete, Frankie doesn't have the issues that Conor has when making the weight for featherweight. Frankie is five foot, six inches tall, Conor is a whole three inches taller at five foot, nine inches. To describe them, Frankie is a natural featherweight who could potentially make bantamweight, Conor is a huge featherweight more suited to the lightweight division.
The gap between the lightweight and welterweight divisions is 15lbs, a lot of fighters who should be fighting in around 165-170lbs tend to drop to lightweight in order to compete where they would have the advantage in size as opposed to being undersized at welterweight. A good example of this is Benson Henderson, the man Frankie Edgar lost his lightweight belt to. In their first fight, Joe Rogan on the commentary mentioned how it looked like a featherweight fighting a welterweight. Interestingly enough Henderson shares a lot of physical attributes with Conor McGregor. Both fighters use the unconventional southpaw stance, (leading with the right foot & hand), are 5ft 9in with a 74inch reach. In their two fights, Frankie despite having a lot of success still looked undersized and underpowered against Henderson. Straight after his second loss to Henderson, Frankie dropped down to featherweight where he challenged Jose Aldo for the belt. He lost that fight on a decision but still showed a lot of heart, particularly after the damage Aldo did with the leg kicks in the earlier rounds. Frankie brought with him the speed, footwork and work rate which made him a champion at lightweight
For Conor to beat Edgar, he would have to utilize his six inch reach advantage. While Edgar has fought and overcome fighters with the size and reach advantage that Conor has, he has never fought someone with the sheer raw power that Conor has in his left hand along with the southpaw stance. Edgar is a pressure fighter who likes to close the distance to land strikes or to force a take down. Conor would need to circle and keep Edgar on the outside and pick his shots. He would also need to use his oblique kicks to the lead leg of Frankie to slow his advance. It is hard to say how the fight would go if it went into the championship rounds for Conor, luckily for him, he has usually ends his fights by then. In the UFC he has been scheduled for four five-round main event slots, the furthest he has gone in any of those fights has been the end of the second. He went the distance against Max Holloway in August 2013 after tearing his ACL in the second round. I am not saying that Conor would struggle in the later rounds, more so that we have no proof as we have yet to see him go the distance. Frankie on the other hand has gone the distance a number of times with him finishing strong in all of those fights. Had I written this article two weeks ago, I would have said that for Edgar to win this fight, he would need to utilize his wrestling in order to minimize the use of Conor's left hand. However after his incredible first round knock out of Chad Mendes at the The Ultimate Fighter Finale, his striking is something that now has to be feared and if he manages to close the distance on Conor, it could make for some interesting exchanges. Between the two fighters they have fought forty five professional fights, both fighters have professional losses but neither fighter in any of those fights has been knocked out. Gray Maynard came very close to finishing Edgar but somehow Frankie managed to survive.
I would like to see this fight take place at the rumored Madison Square Garden show in New York that is scheduled for April 2016, should MMA be made legal in New York of course. A lot of people do want to see Conor move up to lightweight straightaway, fight for the belt and then drop down to defend his featherweight belt against Frankie. Myself I would like to see Conor fight Frankie sooner rather than later. If Conor beats Edgar, all the featherweight questions have been answered and he can leave the division in peace. If Conor was never to fight Edgar, that question would follow him around for the rest of his career. Conor can then bulk up and concentrate fully on going for the lightweight belt as opposed to alternating between both weight classes. The ideal situation for Conor would be a quick injury free defeat of Edgar, leaving him able to focus on a July date with Rafael Dos Anjos for the lightweight belt at UFC 200.