On Saturday night, at UFC 150, Frankie Edgar will have the opportunity to win back the UFC Lightweight Championship when he takes on Benson Henderson in the main event at the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado.
It's a fight that Dana White was reluctant to give him, and while the UFC president never picks sides in a fight that takes place in the Octagon, he could be forgiven for rooting against "The Answer" just a bit.
White has made no secret of his desire for Edgar - who is on the small side for the 155-pound division - to drop to featherweight to challenge Jose Aldo for the title at 145 pounds. He's not the only one who's called for Edgar to go to featherweight, as many observers not only love the prospect of an Aldo-Edgar encounter for the title, but honestly believe that Edgar is best suited to fighting at 145.
Edgar just hasn't been listening, and given that he held the belt for a year and a half at 155 - not to mention the fact that the decision that gave Henderson the title at UFC 144 in Japan was a controversial one - he hasn't had reason to. If he falls against Henderson on Saturday, however, he just might have to listen.
And no one would be happier about that than UFC management.
White can be believed when he says that he doesn't root for some fighters over others when they're fighting in his Octagon. He has to deal with everybody, and that means some measure of impartiality. However, since the WEC was folded into the UFC at the end of 2010, the featherweight division hasn't really had a real epic battle to truly establish the division in the UFC. Mark Hominick delivered a game effort against Aldo at UFC 129, finishing with a late charge that had Aldo holding on for dear life, but that's the best it's been. Kenny Florian and Chad Mendes never really threatened Aldo, and while a planned bout with Erik Koch at UFC 149 fell apart due to injury, it was never the kind of must-see bout of the variety that the UFC has had in every other division, including bantamweight (Urijah Faber vs. Dominick Cruz at UFC 132), lightweight (Edgar vs. Gray Maynard III at UFC 136) and middleweight (Chael Sonnen vs. Anderson Silva at UFC 148).
Enter the prospect of Aldo vs. Edgar. MMA fans have long coveted certain interdivisional superfights, and they've gotten them in the past when BJ Penn moved up to welterweight to challenge the likes of Matt Hughes and Georges St-Pierre. Lately, though, there hasn't been quite as much success, with GSP vs. Anderson Silva being the most notable example of a fight that the UFC hasn't been able to make happen. If Edgar loses, however, a fight with Aldo would likely be much easier to assemble, and it would be a real, sellable main event, the first that the featherweight division has had since the UFC-WEC merger.
If Dana White is rooting for that to happen deep down in his heart of hearts, well, that can be forgiven.
