This time it is for actual: The wait is over for Holloway-Edgar title struggle
If there may be one phrase that completely sums up UFC 240’s principal occasion, a featherweight title struggle between Max Holloway and Frankie Edgar, it is likely to be: Right here we’re once more.
Right here we’re once more at this matchup, which the UFC scheduled in 2017 and 2018, solely to see it fall by way of each occasions attributable to harm.
Right here we’re once more with Edgar, who has an opportunity to dethrone a dominant champion from Hawaii in a bout only a few suppose he can win (as was the case when he fought BJ Penn in 2010).
UFC 240 options dominant featherweight champion Max Holloway defending towards veteran Frankie Edgar, who at 37 is likely to be competing for a title for the ultimate time. Within the co-main occasion, Cris Cyborg goals to bounce again from simply her second profession defeat towards the unbeaten Felicia Spencer.
UFC 240: Holloway vs. Edgar
• Saturday, Edmonton, Alberta
• Early prelims: ESPN+, 6:30 p.m. ET
• Prelims: ESPN, eight p.m. ET
• Predominant card: ESPN+ PPV, 10 p.m. ET
UFC 240 Content material
• The triumphs of Frankie Edgar
• Will Edgar be capable to face up to Holloway’s high-volume placing?
• The place might Cyborg land in free company?
Order UFC 240 now
And right here we’re once more with a Holloway championship struggle week in Canada. Three of his six UFC title fights have taken place in that nation, and the connection between a child from Waianae, Hawaii, and the Nice White North has become one of many sport’s most inconceivable amorous affairs.
This occasion, which takes place on Saturday in Edmonton, Alberta, finds itself caught between UFC 239, the promotion’s massive Worldwide Battle Week card earlier this month in Las Vegas, and subsequent month’s UFC 241, which is headlined by heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier and likewise options the return of Nate Diaz. Due to that juxtaposition, this weekend’s modest struggle card might simply be missed.
For the 2 males concerned in the primary occasion, nevertheless, Saturday’s struggle is a vital matchup. Edgar is a assured future Corridor of Famer, and he and his staff insist he has so much left at age 37. However his iconic light-weight championship win over Penn was 9 years in the past. He did efficiently retain his belt by way of three defenses, however since then he has come up brief in 4 title fights. This is likely to be his final likelihood to be a champion.
And Holloway, in fact, is coming off his first loss in additional than 5 years — a unanimous-decision defeat to Dustin Poirier in April in a bout that, had he gained, would have set him as much as face undefeated light-weight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov.
As a lot because the storylines really feel acquainted going into UFC 240, the ramifications of this matchup are distinctive to those males and this time of their careers.
ESPN Stats & Data
By the numbers
1: UFC champions who’ve defended a belt coming off a loss. Holloway, who fell brief towards Dustin Poirier in a light-weight interim title struggle three months in the past, is searching for to affix BJ Penn, who, whereas light-weight champ in 2009, made an unsuccessful bid for Georges St-Pierre’s welterweight belt. Six months after that TKO loss, Penn efficiently defended his 155-pound strap with a fourth-round submission of Kenny Florian.
2 Associated
eight: UFC title fights for Edgar, who reigned at light-weight from 2010 to 2012 and challenged for the featherweight belt in his 145-pound debut in 2013 and likewise for an interim strap three years later. If Edgar wins the title Saturday, he would turn into the eighth fighter in UFC historical past to win championships in a number of divisions.
1,808: Vital strikes within the UFC for Holloway, probably the most within the promotion’s historical past. The entire contains his fights not at featherweight. Edgar has the fourth most, 1,463, behind Michael Bisping’s 1,567 and Donald Cerrone’s 1,518.
83: UFC rounds fought by Edgar, probably the most in UFC historical past. Demian Maia has fought in 82. Edgar additionally ranks first in time spent within the Octagon: 6 hours, 47 minutes and 33 seconds. Rafael Dos Anjos is second at 6:28:11.
1: Takedowns surrendered by Holloway in his final 11 fights. Edgar has 67 takedowns in his UFC profession, fifth most in historical past, in keeping with UFC Stats.
Supply: ESPN Stats & Data
A glance again (only a few months)
DAMAGE DONE — Max Holloway normally is not the one who seems to be like a crushed man after his fights, however that’s the case on the conclusion of his 5 rounds within the Octagon with Dustin Poirier in April, an unsuccessful bid so as to add the light-weight belt. Josh Hedges/Zuffa LLC/Getty Photographs
A glance again (nearly a decade)
SURPRISE, SURPRISE — Frankie Edgar stuns the MMA world by ending the two-year reign of BJ Penn as UFC light-weight champion with an in depth however unanimous choice win in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, on April 10, 2010. Josh Hedges/Zuffa LLC/Getty Photographs
5 vs. 5
Max Holloway’s most up-to-date outcomes
Frankie Edgar’s most up-to-date outcomes
Combating phrases
After the UFC’s second try and pit Holloway towards Edgar, at UFC 222 in March 2018, was scuttled when Max pulled out due to a leg harm, Frankie accepted a alternative opponent, Brian Ortega — and misplaced by first-round knockout. Afterward, Holloway despatched a consoling message on social media to his would-be challenger:
You had nothing to realize from taking that struggle @FrankieEdgar. However you took it you defended what you already earned. There is no belt for sacrificing every part however true followers and Jersey is aware of no belt can outshine what you carry to the game. Chin up bratha
— Max Holloway (@BlessedMMA) March four, 2018
Dom & Gil’s movie research
And the winner is …
It is a fast turnaround for Holloway, whose grueling five-round battle with Poirier appears like yesterday. It is also his first journey again to 145 kilos since December. Holloway has repeatedly stated the burden reduce isn’t any drawback, however it’s value noting the soar he is made to 155 and now again to 145 this 12 months. Edgar is perennially underrated, and I am giving him an actual shot to win, however it’s arduous to choose towards Holloway at featherweight. Brett Okamoto’s decide: Holloway through choice.
Caesars sportsbook: Holloway -420, Edgar +330
Ready within the wings
Taking a wild guess right here, however let’s go along with Alexander Volkanovski. You understand, the 20-1 Aussie using a 17-fight win streak — the newest victory being a dominant choice in Brazil over Jose Aldo, the legend who owns two victories over Edgar. This weekend’s title struggle ought to have been Volkanovski’s, by all rights. The UFC cannot overlook the 30-year-old once more, can it?
What to look at for (past the primary occasion)
Girls — and eras — collide
Felicia Spencer made her skilled MMA debut on Sept. 12, 2015. At that time, her opponent this Saturday, Cris Cyborg, was a decade into her profession and was using a 15-fight unbeaten streak. The Brazilian had already been featherweight champion in Strikeforce and was the reigning champ in Invicta FC. It was between her and Ronda Rousey for Baddest Girl on the Planet.
Will this assembly on the crossroads flip right into a altering of the guard in favor of the 28-year-old Spencer (7-Zero), herself a former Invicta 145-pound champ? Or will Cyborg (20-2, 1 NC), 34, use this struggle to catapult herself right into a rematch with Amanda Nunes, who took away her belt final December in a 51-second firefight?
A couple of scary Cyborg details to chew on:
Her loss to Nunes snapped a 21-fight unbeaten streak.
Of her 20 profession wins, 17 have come by KO/TKO, 10 within the first spherical.
Her four.56 important strike differential is the very best in UFC historical past, in keeping with UFC Stats.
Certainly one of these guys would possibly make a reputation for himself
Other than Cyborg and the primary occasion combatants, there isn’t any one on this card who anyone however the diehards would name a reputation fighter. However that might very properly change within the prelims when Alexandre Pantoja, who’s No. 5 within the ESPN males’s flyweight rankings, meets sixth-ranked Deiveson Figueiredo.
Pantoja (21-Three), a 29-year-old from Rio de Janeiro, has had first-round finishes in his final two fights. Figueiredo (15-1), who’s 31 and fights out of Soure within the state of Pará, Brazil, has had finishes in 13 of his 15 wins. Neither man has been completed in his profession.
Figueiredo has one of the best placing protection in UFC flyweight historical past, having absorbed simply 1.7 important strikes per minute within the cage. However Pantoja lands four.5 per minute, probably the most amongst lively UFC flyweights. (Thanks for digging up these numbers, ESPN Stats & Data.)
With the 125-pound division seemingly being resuscitated, this struggle might propel the winner towards unexpected alternative.
Nickname of the evening
Oh yeah, yet one more factor about that males’s flyweight prelim: It is a battle for this distinguished honor. Pantoja is understood to his (courageous human) buddies as “The Cannibal.” Figueiredo solutions to “Deus Da Guerra” (Portuguese for “God of Warfare”). Shall one of the best deity or man-eater win.