Frankie Edgar talks about the other side of the highlight reel

Every highlight win has the fighter who didn’t win. At UFC Vegas 18 on February 13, that was Frankie Edgar, who suffered a devastating jump knee KO loss to Cory Sandhagen in just 28 seconds. In a recent interview with ESPN’s Brett Okamoto, “The Answer” talked about it.

It is what it is, said Edgar. This is an unforgiving sport. It sucks, man. I’m going to be on this guy’s highlight reel forever, and that’s just going to play forever. But it is what it is. It could’ve easily been him on the other end. And I’ve been on the other end of those, as well.

Although Edgar came to in time to stand center Octagon for the official announcement, he wasn’t with it.

I didn’t really come to until I was in the back, said Edgar. That is the first thing I remember. I’m sitting around the doctors going through that whole process with them, Mark and Ricardo are next to me and I’m like, ‘Mark, what happened?’ He’s like ‘You fought,’ and I kind of figured that but, I couldn’t remember who the f*** I fought. I’m like ‘Who did I fight?’ He’s like ‘Sandhagen.’ I’m trying to remember training for the guy and I could not remember training for him. Since when was I supposed to fight him? I thought maybe I just took this fight on short notice or something. He’s like ‘Bro, two months. You’ve been training for this guy for two months.’ I just couldn’t wrap it around my head.

The doctor asked me what day it was and for the life of me, I could not remember. I was like, ‘September, December.’ That is when they said I needed to go get a cat scan. We go to the hospital and then on the way to the hospital the nurse in the ambulance said ‘What day of February is it?’ I’m like, ‘Boom, the 6th.’ Right away that is when things started snowballing and I started to remember. Then I remembered the warmup and even the first 20 seconds before getting hit with the knee. So everything came back to me but I don’t remember walking out of the cage though.

This is what I’ve been doing my whole life. I understand the risks and there’s nothing we can do about it. It already happened. I still feel like I’m pretty with it. A lot of people want to look at that – it was a nasty knockout, for sure – but was that any better than me getting my head beat in for a round by Gray Maynard and still finding a way? I took one shot here. Gray Maynard, I took 15 shots. What’s better? I don’t know. When you get old, people are like, ‘Now you’ve got to retire!’ If I got knocked out when I was 25 would you say retire?

Edgar, who will undoubtedly enter the UFC Hall of Fame, now faces the questions of when he will retire.

I don’t know when it’s gonna happen, said Edgar. It’s just going to have to happen one day. It may be me, it may be my coaches. I’m hoping it’s me first. I don’t want to be the guy where someone has to tell me that I need to walk away, but it may take that. I don’t know. The type of person I am, it may take my coaches or my wife to be like, ‘Yo, it’s time to walk away.’ I just know that time’s not now. And I feel like they know that time’s not now as well.