Coach: Frankie Edgar is really a 135er
Coach: Frankie Edgar is really a 135 pounder
Frankie Edgar won the UFC lightweight championship, without cutting. He successfully defended it three times. Then he lost the title to Benson Henderson, and lost the rematch, via Split Decision, and dropped to 145. He lost a decision to featherweight champion Jose Aldo, but then put together a five fight win streak. In his last fight, he again lost a decision to Aldo, this time for the Interim featherweight belt.
His coach Mark Henry recently appeared on Ariel Helwani’s The MMA Hour, and discussed the past and the future.
“Frankie is so amazing, man,” said Henry, as transcribed by Shaun Al-Shatti for MMA Fighting. “You just have to yell out anything to him and he’ll jump all over it. He trusts in his corner a lot, and I just think that the chasing — we were just trying to be so aggressive and kind of left our game a little bit, instead of taking the time and working more of our game. I think we just rushed things a little bit. It reminded me a little bit of Dillashaw – Dominick Cruz, where Dillashaw kind of left his game a little bit, just rushing after him and trying to just go after him, and wasn’t putting technique into play.”
“If I could do that over again, Frankie in the first 70-percent of the camp was just on fire. I don’t know if wanting it so bad, I over-trained him a little bit. I’m going to change things up this time for our whole camp.
“Joe Rogan talks about it a lot with over-training. I think I’m going to take a little bit of that advice and maybe slow down a little bit on the sparring and make sure that we go in with guns blazing and everything clicks. We’ve been doing it for 12 years, a certain style, but I think you could always make things better and I think that’s one thing I blame on myself, maybe I just pushed a little too hard. But definitely no excuse at all, Aldo won. He deserved it.”
Edgar has now lost twice to Aldo, and said a fight with Max Holloway or Jeremy Stephens should be next. Henry however thinks the quickest path to a title shot lies down.
“I think he’s one of the best fighters who ever walked on the face of the Earth,” said Henry. “I think that people still don’t realize — like Marlon [Moraes], he’s a 135er, he’s bigger than Frankie. Frankie is a true 135er. I hate to say this stuff, but Conor fights Nate, it’s probably more of his weight class, 155, and they make the biggest deal out of Conor and he came up mega-short. Frankie had a title at 155 and came really close this last time at winning his second title, and he’s really a 135er.
“So, for me, I just really want to go the shortest cut to the next title, whether it be 135 or 145, whatever brings him the closest. That nine hours (with the new weigh-ins) didn’t help either, that extra nine hours at 145. Aldo, man, he looked big out there. I’ve had other guys too like Eddie [Alvarez] and Edson [Barboza], in their fights I asked them how they felt with that extra nine hours recovering from the weight cut and they both said how they both felt a lot different and a lot stronger. So that’s kind of tough too, when you give a guy nine extra hours on the weight cut, that Frankie has to kind of deal with now too.”
Given that the new weigh in process makes cutting easier, and that 135 champion Dominick Cruz is short challengers he has not already beaten silly, Edgar at 135 may actually happen.