#2 Frankie Edgar vs. Gray Maynard – UFC 136 – 10/08/11
Coming into UFC 136, the stakes couldn’t have been any higher for both Frankie Edgar and Gray Maynard.
The two men had gone to a draw in their previous fight at UFC 125, with Edgar somehow recovering from a horrendous beating in the early rounds to take enough of the later ones to cling onto his title. A lot of fans felt that Maynard was the superior fighter, however.
Up to that point, the draw was the only black mark on his record, save for an odd No Contest against Rob Emerson, a fight that saw Maynard somehow knock himself out at the same time that Emerson tapped out.
Other than that though he’d been flawless, blending his wrestling and boxing together to beat the likes of Roger Huerta, Kenny Florian, Jim Miller and Nate Diaz. Oh, and Edgar himself, a few years before. Maynard was seen as a bit dull, but practically unstoppable.
Edgar would change all of that at UFC 136.
Once again, Maynard came out like a house on fire. He dropped Edgar with a series of uppercuts in the first round, and then put him back down with a knee strike when he managed to stand. A third knockdown came from a running knee, but Edgar still would not go down. Somehow, he survived the round.
Maynard seemed rattled literally after that round, unable to believe that he’d failed once again to put Edgar away. He barely threw a strike in the second round, and by the third round, Edgar began to take over.
The fight went into the fourth round, and this time there was finally a finish – Edgar caught Maynard with an uppercut as he defended a takedown, then dropped him with a right hand and sealed the deal with some punches on the ground.
Despite failing to capture the title, the general feeling was that Maynard could bounce back. Not exactly the case.
Gray took eight months off before returning to beat Clay Guida by split decision in a genuinely terrible fight. And it’s been downhill since, as he suffered three knockout losses in a row to follow – to TJ Grant, Nate Diaz and Ross Pearson.
A decision loss to the unheralded Alexander Yakovlev would follow – arguably the absolute lowest point of his career. Since then, Maynard has dropped to 145lbs, where he picked up an unimpressive win over Fernando Bruno before losing in an equally bad fight against Ryan Hall.
For all intents and purposes, he’s done – his chin is shot to hell and he seems wildly gunshy – basically everything that once served him well is gone. And you can trace it back to that third Edgar fight.
Whether it’s down to Frankie cracking his chin or just the fact that he never psychologically recovered from coming so close to winning the belt only to fall at the last hurdle, is impossible to tell.
It is certain though that his career changed courses after that loss.
