All the judges had Frankie Edgar winning every round, but Urijah Faber surely didn’t feel like he was blown out in the UFC Manila main event.
Faber told Ariel Helwani on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour that he felt Edgar was given the advantage on the cards due to “dead time” when he was attempting to grapple, but not necessarily doing it successfully, like up against the cage in a clinch.
“For me, that was dead time in there,” Faber said. “And that’s kind of the difference. Could I have done some takedown attempts and try to wrestle a little bit? Yeah. But I don’t feel like it was the best move to finish the fight. So that’s why I wasn’t going for as much wrestling.”
Faber (32-8) doesn’t necessarily think he won the fight, which took place May 16 in the UFC’s first foray into the Philippines. But he definitely doesn’t think he lost every round.
“Every round, they gotta give it to someone,” Faber said. “It depends what they’re looking at. I felt like I could have gotten a couple of those rounds, for sure.”
Faber, 36, could have made a case for the first round and the others were tight. But almost every media member polled on MMADecisions.com also scored the bout 50-45 for Edgar.
Either way, Faber didn’t think it was a bad fight by any means, but admitted to feeling lukewarm about it from a personal level.
“It was interesting,” Faber said. “Kind of anticlimactic for me. Because of the matchup it was like hard for openings to come to fruition. We had a lot of exchanges and kind of like a high-speed chess match they call it. I would have liked to do more damage and it seems like a little more damage was done to me. It was tough, man.”
Not that Faber lost any of his value with the loss. Edgar is a former UFC lightweight champion and probably the next in line for a featherweight title shot. Faber is one of the best lighter weight fighters of all time and still not too far from his prime. He can hang with just about anyone out there at featherweight and bantamweight, as proven in the close contest with Edgar.
Faber, who once held the WEC featherweight title, had been competing at bantamweight until the Edgar bout. The Team Alpha Male patriarch doesn’t know what weight class his next fight will be in. At this point in his career he’s just looking for the most interesting matchups and there are plenty of those at both 145 and 135.
“I know I’m right there with the top level at both weight classes, so it just gives me options,” Faber said. “There are a few guys in the world who are able to compete in multiple weight classes at the highest level. Some guys will never be able to hold a match to the top three their entire career.”
Faber had won two in a row and six of his last seven before the loss to Edgar. He’s still ranked as the No. 4 bantamweight contender in the UFC. Faber said the weight cut was way easier for 145 and he was much healthier in training camp, but he wouldn’t rule out a return to 135, either, especially with fascinating rematches against guys like Dominick Cruz and Renan Barao still looming.
If he had his choice, Faber would have gone another five rounds with Edgar and he knows both of them would have remained strong. Who knows what would have happened in that instance? But Faber knows in his heart that 50-45 wasn’t indicative of what really happened in the fight.
“The fight was definitely closer than the judges’ scorecards,” he said. “It wasn’t like I felt like anyone ran away with the fight. It was just kind of anti-climactic.”