At 34, Frankie Edgar's window for another UFC featherweight title shot is closing rapidly.
On his UFC debut at 145, nearly three years ago now, Edgar lost out to then champion Jose Aldo.
Despite numerous promises he has not received another chance to claim the featherweight belt.
Edgar knocked out Chad Mendes on the Ultimate Fighter Finale card just a day before Conor McGregor defeated Jose Aldo at UFC 194. That performance - which he labeled one of the best of his career - had many speculating that his day had finally come around once more.
A bit over three weeks on from that victory, Edgar is not positive about his chances of getting that shot.
I want to fight McGregor for the belt as soon as possible. Am I going to get it? I fucking doubt it.
Speaking to Ariel Helwani on the MMA Hour, Edgar told of his feeling that his stance as a 'company man' was not proving beneficial.
I'm in limbo here. I was promised that I'd get what I want one night and the next night it's 'ah, I guess that Conor gets whatever he wants.'
For sure I'm pissed. I've been at this for a while now. I've been knocking on the door for the title shot for a while. It started with Cub. If he beat me, he was promised the title shot. I beat him in dominating fashion and I'm not even considered for that title shot.
I take it in my stride. I take everything in my stride. I'm a company man but it's not really panning out for me being that way.
On December 12th, in Las Vegas at UFC 194, Edgar thought he was being beckoned into the octagon, perhaps in a move to immediately market a fight with Conor McGregor.
It turned out, he was mistaken.
The night of Conor's fight, I talked to Dana a little bit. I walked up to go into the cage. Someone grabbed me to go up to the cage. One of them was Ali and the other was Lorenzo's assistant. So I thought they wanted me to walk into the cage. Walked up to go in there and Dana said 'you're not going in there.'
He said 'Conor's going up. We don't know what he's doing. He might give Aldo a rematch. We don't know what he's doing.'
Despite having just claimed one of the great victories of his career, Edgar returned home 'deflated'.
I was deflated.
I was sky-high one day and the next day, literally, someone rained on my parade. It was eating at me. I thought 'fuck, I just fought one of the best fights of my life, I shouldn't be feeling like this. I should be going home riding high.'
You only have so many of those moments in this career and for it to get taken away from me by the next day was tough.
You can listen to Edgar on the MMA Hour from the 7:30 mark below.
Picture credit: Ramsey Cardy / SPORTSFILE
