Frankie Edgar isn’t lost on how important his upcoming fight against Max Holloway is for his career and legacy.
Edgar is a former lightweight champion, who has come up short on two separate bids to become a two-division title holder while competing at featherweight.
Both of Edgar’s title fight losses at 145 pounds have come against former champion Jose Aldo but he’ll get a third bite at the apple when he faces off with Holloway in the main event at UFC 222 on March 3 in Las Vegas.
It’s not often fighters get one shot at the title much less three of them so Edgar acknowledges that there’s a good chance this may be his last opportunity to finally win the UFC featherweight championship.
That being said, Edgar plans on putting everything into his training camp to ensure he finally becomes the fifth person in UFC history — alongside B.J. Penn, Randy Couture, Conor McGregor and Georges St-Pierre — to hold two titles in two different divisions.
“I mean yeah, it probably is [my last shot],” Edgar said at the UFC 222 pre-fight press conference. “I’ll make the best of it.”
During the course of the press conference, Holloway mentioned several times that he’d like to go through Edgar and then potentially serve as an alternate for the UFC 223 main event pitting Tony Ferguson against Khabib Nurmagomedov.
Unfortunately because that fight has fallen apart three times in the past, the UFC might want a top ranked opponent on standby to step in just in case someone gets injured or can’t compete and Holloway seemed more than willing to accept that opportunity.
That earned a response from Edgar, who promised to keep all of the Hawaiian’s champion’s attention come March 3 when they step into the Octagon together.
“Max is over here worrying about these two guys up here. I worried about one guy,” Edgar said. “I’m going to be on my pirate ship, I’m going to go to Hawaii and get some gold.”
