The UFC 136 fight card is only days away, and lightweight champion Frankie Edgar made an appearance on The MMA Hour on MMAFighting.com.
Edgar is set to make his second title defense against Gray Maynard, his third fight overall against Maynard.
Edgar is 0-1-1 against Maynard and will finally get a shot to move on from the only man to beat him.
“It sucks, but right now is not the time to lose focus,” Edgar said on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour. “I still got a couple more days to think about him, and then we could put him in the rear view.”
Edgar almost suffered a knockout loss against Maynard to begin 2011 at UFC 125. Edgar rallied back from what seemed like a definite loss and somehow salvaged a draw to retain his belt for a little while longer.
“I’m winning, man,” Edgar said. “I’m very confident, especially after that last fight. I think my confidence keeps building from fight to fight. Obviously from B.J. [Penn] to the next B.J. fight. With Gray I know I had a pretty bad first round, but showing what I showed—which I didn’t realize right away until I went home and saw it—in character, it gave me a lot of confidence.”
After almost suffering a loss and being beaten the first time around by Maynard, Edgar wants to go home early come his title fight at UFC 136.
“That’s my goal. I know I get a lot of flack for not [finishing]. I think it has to do with sometimes I am the smaller guy. But I always go into fights looking for it,” Edgar said. “If I could stun a guy, I’m going to try and finish him. And if I can stun him and get him on the ground, I’m going to try and finish him there.”
If Edgar does retain the belt, in the future we might see him drop to 145 pounds and challenge for that belt and hold dual championships.
“That’s something that a lot of my teammates talk about and stuff, and my coaches,” said Edgar. “Things got to work out the right way, but I think it’s definitely an interesting possibility, and an intriguing one.”
Cutting weight isn’t exactly the easiest thing to do, and though a move to featherweight could happen for Edgar, it would be a difficult move.
“It’s nice to have that ace in my pocket to be able to go down there and possibly fight for the belt in another weight class,” said Edgar. “But a lot of people think you lose weight, you automatically win. You’re going to be the bigger guy, but there’s also…I haven’t cut weight in six years, the guys are going to be quicker. So there’s a lot of other factors that play into it.”
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