UFC Fight Night 57: Edgar, Swanson Still Hope to Choose Their Own Adventures

The dense plot surrounding the UFC featherweight title got some clarifying edits last Saturday at UFC 180.

Prior to Ricardo Lamas’ quick and easy victory over Dennis Bermudez, you could make the case that as many as four men were in the hunt for the next shot at the 145-pound championship. With Bermudez now out, at least the herd has been thinned a bit.

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If Cub Swanson takes care of business against Frankie Edgar this Saturday at UFC Fight Night 57 and extends his win streak to seven, he’ll be the obvious choice as No. 1 contender. If not, then all eyes will likely turn to Conor McGregor’s January showdown against Dennis Siver.

But with Swanson, McGregor and Edgar all theoretically still in the mix and a good five or six months between any of them and a potential fight against champ Jose Aldo, it’s not an entirely cut-and-dried situation either. Until we get Swanson and Edgar to further simplify things this weekend in Austin, Texas, the featherweight title picture retains as many potential twists and turns as your average choose-your-own-adventure novel.

No matter which way UFC matchmakers decide to go next, it should make a heck of a story.

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UFC President Dana White sought to ease Swanson’s mind this week, making it sound as though recent speculation that McGregor might leapfrog him on the 145-pound ladder was unfounded, so long as he keeps winning.

“Cub Swanson has been screaming for respect and for us to show him the love,” White told Fox Sports 1’s Mike Hill on Monday. “He’s taking on Frankie Edgar, who is a beast, the longtime world champion at 155 pounds … and yes, if Cub Swanson wins this fight, we did tell him we will give him a title shot.”

Indeed, if Swanson bests Edgar, there simply won’t be much of a case to be made against him. It’s taken more than five years and an impressive 8-2 run for him to distance himself from his 12-second knockout loss to Aldo back in June 2009. For much of that time he toiled in relative obscurity, while fighters like Aldo, Urijah Faber and Chad Mendes garnered most of the 145-pound headlines.

But after dropping his UFC debut to Lamas in November 2011, he’s rattled off six consecutive wins, garnering Fight of the Night honors after each of his last two. Finally, Swanson stands at the brink of regaining top contender status and, maybe, a headlining spot on pay-per-view as part of the UFC’s important 2015 schedule.

There is only one potential fly in his soup. As of this writing, he’s is going off as a 2-1 underdog to Edgar, according to Odds Shark.

The former lightweight champ has been his old, indefatigable self since cutting to featherweight on the heels of back-to-back losses to Benson Henderson during 2012. Matchmakers fast-forwarded Edgar into an immediate shot at Aldo at UFC 156—where he lost—but since then he’s bounced back with wins over Charles Oliveira and BJ Penn.

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If the UFC was actively looking for a spoiler to derail Swanson’s run to the title, it couldn’t do much better than Edgar. If he’s able to grind out one of his trademark gritty decision victories, it’ll open the door for McGregor to pounce.

Nobody has been hotter than the 26-year-old Irishman of late. McGregor has jetted to 4-0 in the Octagon and has been such a star on the mic that there was some conjecture he might find his way into a title shot even before his bout against Siver was announced. If he can win that one (where he’ll surely be a heavy favorite), he’ll likely move to the front of the line as a suitor for Aldo.

Unless Edgar has anything to say about it.

The Answer has been largely forgotten in the 145-pound conversation during the last couple of months. Especially after Aldo defeated Mendes for the second time at UFC 179, media and fans have been preoccupied with the developing soap opera between Swanson, Bermudez and McGregor.

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Yet, if we’ve learned anything from his near eight-year career in the UFC, it’s that counting Edgar out is a huge mistake. Nonetheless, he told MMA Fighting.com’s Ariel Helwani this week that he’s not losing any sleep over the featherweight pecking order, because he knows he can’t control it.

"They haven't told me (if I'm a contender),” he said, as quoted by the website’s Luke Thomas. “I've got to not give them a choice. That's the best way to do it. Not give them a choice.”

Choice, of course, being a fairly apropos word here.

There are still many roads that could lead to the next featherweight title bout. Either Swanson fulfills his long trek back to Aldo or McGregor culminates his short one, or Edgar does something so impressive he screws it up for both of them.

Any way it pans out, the journey figures to be quite the adventure.