Edgar beats Penn a second time
After his first victory over long-time lightweight legend and then-UFC 155lb champion B.J Penn in April, the new champion, Frankie Edgar, still had to deal with plenty of naysayers. Many people argued the fight had been scored wrong, and should have gone to Penn. Others said that Edgar had pulled off something of a fluke victory, and that Penn simply had a bad night, suffering from sinus infection and lacking his usual fire.
But Saturday at UFC 118 Edgar left absolutely no doubt, defending his belt successfully against Penn in a rematch that saw Edgar dominate Penn throughout the fight.
The first round was close, with Penn and Edgar trading early. Penn got the better of it, but Edgar was able to take Penn down. Penn used his Brazilian jiu-jitsu to attempt multiple submissions, but in a pattern that would repeat itself throughout the fight, Edgar would escape. By the end of the first round, Edgar had established a pattern of control and dominance.
Round two once again saw Penn start well early, but Edgar soon had done of it, wisely able to take Penn down whenever he was getting the worse of the stand-up. By the end of the second round he’d come back and was not only able to out-wrestle Penn, but also to outbox Penn, quite an achievement given Penn’s legendary boxing ability. The third round was all Edgar, and while he was taken down and mounted in the fourth he scrambled up quickly, showing terrific defensive BJJ when he needed to. Finally in the fifth Penn seemed all but broken, and Edgar walked away with a lopsided decision. All three judges gave Edgar every round.
The fight now gives some much-deserved respect to Edgar. In their first fight, he came in as roughly a 10-1 underdog. Even with the controversial victory, at UFC 118 he was still almost a 3-1 underdog, with most expecting the champion to bounce back stronger and take out Edgar.
Edgar will now find himself in a similar situation as Penn: fighting a rematch against an opponent who beat him in the past. With Gray Maynard’s victory over Kenny Florian on the same card, Maynard will have the next crack at Edgar. Maynard (10-0) is the only person to have ever beaten Edgar in mixed martial arts, having defeated him in 2008. Back then Maynard used his wrestling to control Edgar throughout the fight, and Edgar faced calls to drop down to a lighter weight class after the heavier Maynard beat him. He’s certainly proved those critics wrong, but now he’ll have to avenge a loss in order to keep his belt.
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