UFC: Frank Edgar Saves the Lightweight Division

The magnitude of Frank Edgar's win over BJ Penn can hardly be overstated.

BJ Penn was thought to be invincible at lightweight.

It seemed like it would be a matter of time before Penn would once again become bored with his division and make another run at the UFC welterweight title.

Nobody believed that Edgar even had a shot.

Well, Edgar refused to buy into all the hype and fought a nearly perfect fight to send shockwaves through the lightweight division.

Had Edgar gone out and brawled with Penn, he probably would have been knocked out.

If Edgar had insisted upon his takedowns early, he probably would have wasted energy getting stuffed and would have lost more rounds, perhaps costing him the fight.

Instead, Edgar stayed mobile, and used takedown attempts only occasionally as if he just wanted to use them to confuse Penn.

Somehow, he managed to do fairly well against Penn in the area of boxing, which surprised everybody who thought Penn had the best boxing in MMA.

In defeating Penn, Edgar captured the UFC lightweight title, and saved the rest of the division from becoming a race for second place.

Had Penn won, the situation would have looked bleak for the rest of the lightweight division.

Even if Penn vacated the title, the rest of the division would really have been fighting for the right to keep BJ Penn's belt warm while he moved on to bigger challenges.

Now, Edgar has proved that Penn is still beatable at lightweight and that the rest of the division is not just sitting there to make BJ Penn look good by comparison.

Still, while I don't want to take anything away from Edgar's win, there are still a few important things to keep in mind.

The fight was extremely close and difficult to call. Upon my initial viewing, I scored the fight 49-47 for Penn, giving Edgar the last round and a 10-10 scoring for the fourth round.

Because the exchanges were so fast, and because the camera angles occasionally made it difficult to judge exchanges, I had a hard time scoring the fight. 

Looking over the Internet, scores have ranged from 49-46 in favor of Penn to 50-47 in favor of Edgar. Few people are willing to get behind the one official score of 50-45.

More than just being a close fight, I felt that Penn didn't really look that great in this fight. He appeared a bit out of shape before the fight, and seemed to tire late in the fight.

I can't help wondering if a lack of preparation might have played a role in the outcome of the fight.

Also, Penn may simply have thought he was ahead on the scorecards, because he never really seemed to change gears until the last instants in the fight and never made an attempt to bring the fight down to the ground.

In short, I'd still favor Penn in a rematch, if Penn desires one and takes the challenge seriously.

Nevertheless, Edgar has knocked Penn down a few pegs and basically killed off Penn's welterweight ambitions for the near future. 

Penn's legacy will be hurt by this loss unless he's able to come back stronger and dominate again for a longer period of time.

After this loss, I can't fully trust that Penn will ever have the sustained level of motivation required to keep up with Anderson Silva, Fedor Emelianenko, Lyoto Machida, Jose Aldo, and Georges St. Pierre in the race to become "the greatest of all time."

Over the years, Penn's lackluster performances have been attributed to overtraining, undertraining, title-shot jitters, broken ribs, greasing, bad judging and a whole list of other excuses.

I think it's time we put to rest the myth of BJ Penn and realize that although he's extremely talented, his mercurial nature is just as much a part of him as his unbelievable talent...and his talent might just fade before his mercurial tendencies can be overcome.

Penn will need to do a whole lot more to convince me otherwise.

Still, all credit must go to Edgar, because Penn would probably have beaten any other lightweight even in the state that he was in.