No reason to doubt Frankie Edgar's quick turnaround

Frankie Edgar says ‘money talks’ for future with just one fight left on UFC contract

Frankie Edgar appears to be fighting out his contract.

Edgar is coming off a short-notice TKO loss to Chan Sung Jung, aka The Korean Zombie. In the fight, the former UFC lightweight champion got rocked early.

Now, after more than a month to reflect on it, Edgar believes he never had a chance to get going but still is confident in himself.

“Obviously, the fight with ‘Korean Zombie,’ I felt like I never got a chance to get going,” Edgar said on the Joe Rogan Experience (via MMA Junkie). “He got me with a good shot. I was really down on myself. That was a tough one. I was really down on myself for a while. Nobody takes losses well – no one competitive. I definitely took it pretty bad. Christmas was right here. In my head, I took the fight on short notice. But I never once took a fight and didn’t think I was going to win – two weeks’ notice. I was in shape. I was training, not like I was training for a fight. But I was training pretty good. I believe in myself.

“I thought I was going to go in there, put this dude away, come home and enjoy Christmas. It turned out to be the opposite. It was a little depressing during Christmastime. You try to be nice and loving with your family, but what’s weighing over my head is I just got f*****g TKO’d.”

In his next fight, Frankie Edgar says he will still go down to bantamweight.

He was expected to make his 135-pound debut against Cory Sandhagen at UFC Raleigh but took the short notice fight instead. Which meant his fight against Sandhagen was called off and when he will fight is again is to be seen.

“I’m going to go down to 135,” Edgar said. “I’m probably like 156 right now. … My last fight, I was getting down to 145. I got down to 144.5. That’s only 8.5 [pounds] over where I’ve got to be to make 136. It was such an easy cut for this last time. … I think late spring or early summer, [I’ll be back] at 135.”

When he does step into the Octagon, he will do so on the final fight of his contract. Although he has been a UFC lifer, he says money talks for his future but hopes to end his career with the Las Vegas-based promotion.

“It’ll be 13 years I’ve been in the UFC coming in February,” Edgar said. “… Money talks. But I mean, honestly, if I was being straight up, where would I want to finish my career? I do want to finish in the UFC, I got in the UFC at 5-0, I pretty much grew up here.

“It’d be nice to finish it here, but everything has to make sense.”

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Cole Shelton
Cole Shelton covers MMA for BJPenn.com, MMANews, and MyMMANews.com while also being the lead MMA odds writer for Sports Betting Dime