Should Frankie Edgar Drop Down? No. Let him fight Gilbert Melendez

by Dr. Octagon, J.D.

I usually love Joe Rogan, but I was sort of horrified when the first question he asked Frankie Edgar was whether he was going to drop down in weight. In Frankie’s last fight, he knocked out the much larger Gray Maynard.

Frankie just lost a close fight to the number one contender. Some people thought he won this fight. Compubox and Fightmetric couldn’t agree on the amount of strikes he landed. I didn’t think he won, but I also don’t think he really looked out of his element at any point in the match. It was a really tough fight to score, with Frankie landing a lot of punches that didn’t seem to do much damage, and catching Ben’s kicks after they landed.

Edgar also had some successful takedowns. Henderson looked like he was landing the heavier shots, but much of the damage to Frankie’s face could be attributed to a single upkick. It didn’t help that Henderson looked like he barely broke a sweat. If that strike doesn’t land, it would have probably been a much closer fight on the judges’ cards.

Here’s the thing with MMA. People have really short memories. On February 21st, Chuck Mindenhall wrote an article asking if Frankie was the greatest 155-lb. fighter of all time.

Now Chuck doesn’t have very good judgment, especially because he wears that hat and is not in the cast of Broadway’s “Newsies,” but there were a lot of people picking Frankie to win the fight. If there is a rematch, I don’t think he will be much of an underdog. But still, he finally lost, so everyone says it’s time for him to move down.

Not cutting any weight (or at least cutting less weight, see Anthony Johnson) is a strategy more fighters should employ. The conventional wisdom is it makes you much fresher for the fight (especially helpful in the championship rounds), and may also make a fighter harder to knock out.

I’d like to see Frankie fight Jose Aldo, but he shouldn’t be forced to cut down to a  wasteland of a weight class that very few people want to watch. Take a look at the featherweights. Seriously. There really aren’t a lot of great fighters there. The further you get away from the center of the bell curve, the smaller the pool of fighters that can actually fight.

What happens if Frankie beats Aldo? Probably another rematch with Aldo. If he loses to Aldo, there isn’t much left for him in that weight class, and it would be hard to move back up having lost to a “smaller” fighter. Also, I don’t think Aldo is actually smaller than Frankie. If he was in the same cage as Aldo, I think Aldo would look bigger. He’s an inch taller, more muscular, cuts a lot of weight and could probably fight up a weight class without many problems.

Should there be a rematch? I don’t really like rematches unless the judge’s decision was horrible or there was a draw. What if they have a rematch and Edgar wins a close decision? What if there is a draw? There shouldn’t be a rematch every time there isn’t a knockout or Dana White disagrees with judges’ decision. I thought Henderson won, but if they scored it for Edgar I wouldn’t have complained. Neither guy really looked that great.

There are a lot of good fighters in this weight class that should at least get a shot, one of whom, Anthony Pettis, has already beaten Henderson. I don’t think Pettis should be the first, as he had looked like crap in the UFC until his spectacular knockout of Joe Lauzon.

At the end of the day, Dana is going to make whatever fight makes him the most money. I think that fight is Frankie Edgar versus Gilbert Melendez. Now that Frankie isn’t the UFC champion anymore, they can move him over to Strikeforce and give Melendez some good competition as recompense for leaving him stranded in a league without any decent fighters left in it. It would be great to see whether Melendez is the real deal or has benefited from weak opponents.