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In the UFC, the latest winner will always have the most compelling case. That’s the nature of hype, and hype has always been the game. More specifically, hype is the essence that drives the thing forward.

By know everybody knows this. And if they don’t, they should pay attention to Donald Cerrone.

Last week Nate Diaz beat Jim Miller to claim the disputed top contender seed behind titleholder Benson Henderson and challenger Frankie Edgar. On Tuesday, Cerrone beat Jeremy Stephens for three loud rounds only to make his case even louder in the aftermath: He’d like a fight in Denver at UFC 150, against anybody, but preferably against Nate Diaz, who put a surgical beatdown on him in December.

This was of course fishing on “Cowboy’s” part.

Cerrone knows the likelihood of the UFC granting a rematch of a one-sided fight that happened only a few months ago isn’t great. Having thought of that, he made another point clear: That he wasn’t himself that night in December. With that being his fifth fight in 2011, he was just an old husk, not the full ear of corn. Besides, he fought a dumb fight. Just too stubborn.

Now, the Donald Cerrone that methodically picked apart Jeremy Stephens -- that was the genuine article. That’s the one who would threaten Diaz’s bearings if the UFC would give him the chance.

Cowboy was just planting seeds. He knows he has a point. He was smart enough to make his point while momentum was on his side, having just beat Stephens impressively. Forget that Stephens isn’t a top ten lightweight, in the 155-pound division jockeying for position is mandatory. On UFC on Fuel’s post-fight show, Chael Sonnen said he’d like to see Cerrone catapulted into a title shot right away. That’s how swift the tide rolls back in for the latest victors.

Problem is, there will be others soon enough, and they will have arguments of merit and timing and will carry updated casualty lists.

So, just where do things stand in the UFC’s lightweight division? Because on June 22 in Atlantic City, N.J., Clay Guida and Gray Maynard -- two perennial contenders -- would like to know. The winner of that fight then becomes the day’s fresh case-maker. To help promote that fight, we’re sure to hear about the winner being in the proverbial title mix. We’ll hear each guy make his case for it, too.

At this point it might be easier to hold a raffle for the next lightweight title shot, provided that Diaz has the most tickets in the bowl. There are so many deserving fighters hovering near the top.

Was Cerrone overshooting to throw Diaz’s name out there? No. His aim was just right. Maybe his doing that gets Diaz’s blood boiling enough to call matchmaker Joe Silva to book it. And why not? Over the course of years, the UFC has been good about listening to those audacious enough to call their own shots. If Cerrone’s not given Diaz, he’ll likely get one of the scintillating young stars like Edson Barboza -- should he get by Jamie Varner at UFC 146 next week -- or Anthony Pettis. Pettis has been dog-eared for that title shot since downing Joe Lauzon at UFC 144 with that head kick. He’s the forever No. 1 contender B.

Where does the winner of Maynard/Guida factor in? What about if/when Eddie Alvarez makes his way into the UFC’s 155-pound cluster? It all depends on the what/when/where at lightweight. Who went last, who did what, who got the last word.

But if you can’t pass half a dozen contenders in one swoop, call out the guy at the front whom you suspect isn’t cut out for idling for months on end. Call out Diaz in a rematch, the guy who displaced you. And if that can’t be arranged, settle for a top-five fight in your hometown of Denver. That’s how you handle things coming off a dominant victory over a career .500 UFC fighter like Stephens.

Ask for it all, and settle for something far better than you might deserve.

Training camps have become their own game of roulette, and Dominick Cruz -- who trains fiendishly year round -- is the latest casualty.

Cruz tore his anterior cruciate ligament Thursday while prepping for his July 7 title fight with Urijah Faber, and now 2012 will pass by without the UFC bantamweight champion ever stepping into the octagon.

Bummer.

When 10 top contenders can’t beat you, ACL’s are around to remind us that there is such a thing as destructibility. Look at Georges St. Pierre, who suffered the exact same fate. It’s all eggshells before fight night, because injuries remain stubbornly indiscriminate (and prefight drug screenings have a way of coming back hot).

The big difference between Cruz and St. Pierre? St. Pierre’s injury took Carlos Condit with him.

In Faber’s case, he’ll still be dealt a fresh new face, likely in the form of Brazilian Renan Barao or the 21-year old Michael McDonald. Neither one of them provide a gussied-up, trilogy-fight storyline, but both stand a fantastic chance of dialing Faber’s mystique back for good -- which is to say, both have the power to derail Faber’s trilogy fight with Cruz forever.

In a game centered on hype, situations change at far greater speeds than belts. Very likely, whoever wins the rejiggered UFC 148 bout will have the placeholder belt and will wait out Cruz’s timetable for recovery to unify things.

And this is where things fall into a familiar sludge.

How many titlists and top contenders can be on the shelf at once? How many actual and theoretical belts can we introduce without it becoming charades? Whatever the case, matchmakers Joe Silva and Sean Shelby are becoming fluent in the laws of attrition. Taking a look at the tops of the UFC’s weight classes right now -- with all the conditions, exceptions, suspensions and voluntary sabbaticals -- most are a total mess.

St. Pierre will fight only once this year (hopefully), and Anderson Silva possibly the same (but hopefully not). Junior dos Santos is fighting in his first title defense in a few weeks (knock on wood), yet the top contender he was supposed to face -- Alistair Overeem -- is suspended. Likewise, Nick Diaz is suspended at welterweight.

Circumstantially, the latest contenders are putting themselves on hiatus, too. Nate Diaz says he’ll wait out Frankie Edgar/Benson Henderson, a fight that’ll likely take place in September. That means the earliest we see No. 1 contender Diaz again is in December. It’s even rockier for Johny Hendricks at welterweight. If he waits out the tentative November showdown between Condit and St. Pierre, he won’t surface again this year.

Title fights in 2012 are becoming scarce. Out of eight weight classes, we’ve had three in five months, and are on pace for maybe 14. Even the flyweight coronation was postponed due to a bumbled math job in Australia. Big fights are being made, and big fights are falling through. It’s the nature of the fight game to roll with the punches, but what a collision course of rotten luck.

What can you do? To use the most common refrain in MMA right now, it is what it is. The UFC can’t issue a memorandum that says, “tread light before the fight.” With Cruz out for the next nine months, it means opportunity for either Barao or McDonald. And the UFC has always been very good at branding optimism and opportunism above all else.

As for this year they have to, because that's what's for sale.

We’ve come to expect, even look forward to the passionate postfight ramblings of the Diaz brothers.

It wouldn’t really feel like a Diaz victory, after all, without copious shout-outs to the homies. It wouldn’t feel right without some chest-thumping on behalf of the 209, or Stockton, or NorCal, or just California in general (it seems the place the Diazes call home gets bigger the farther away they get). The evening just wouldn’t be complete without the now obligatory praise for a newly vanquished opponent and at least one out-of-the-blue announcement to make us all narrow our eyes at the TV a little bit and go: “Huh?”

On Saturday night in New Jersey, it was Nate Diaz’s turn.

Diaz had just defeated Jim Miller at UFC on Fox 3 to solidify his position as top contender for the organization’s lightweight title. In an absolutely appropriate summation by UFC color commentator Joe Rogan, Diaz had “completely handled” Miller en route to dealing him the first stoppage loss of his MMA career via funky second-round guillotine choke. It was Diaz’s third win in a row since dropping back down from welterweight last year. He seems to have suddenly come into his own inside the Octagon and is now set to take on the winner of the Aug. 11 do-over between champion Ben Henderson and ex-champ Frankie Edgar.

When asked by Rogan how he views his own standing in the sport’s most competitive division, Diaz first stumbled through the typical clichés about wanting to be top dog, but then tacked on an addendum that -- while not exactly surprising -- speaks to the unique landscape of the 155-pound division right now.

“I’m trying to be the No. 1 in this world,” Diaz said. “There’s only one person above all of us and that’s Gilbert "El Nino" Melendez, the true world champion lightweight.”

Diaz, of course, is terribly biased. He and Melendez are longtime teammates on the Cesar Gracie fight team, so it’s in no way shocking that he would use a live mic on national television to give the Strikeforce champion his propers. However, it is somewhat surprising that anyone on the doorstep of a UFC title shot would so readily and publicly admit he thinks the best fighter in his weight class competes elsewhere.

Also, even if Diaz didn’t know it, he had a point. His words actually did much to underscore the fractured state of the lightweight ranks right now.

For perhaps the first time in the modern history of the sport -- or, at least, in recent memory -- there are no fewer than five fighters who can lay somewhat serious claim to being the No.1 lightweight in the world. Sure, maybe not all of them could make overwhelming cases for themselves, but you wouldn’t immediately laugh any of them out of the room, either.

Since, as Diaz sort of pointed out, several of said guys don’t fight in the UFC, it makes the question of who is truly the best in the world more difficult to answer than ever. It also obviously makes the 155 pound class one of the most interesting in the sport.

Considering that what we typically do when we fill out MMA top 10 lists is just insert “Whoever has UFC Title” at No. 1, Henderson is the conventional pick as top lightweight of the moment. In the former WEC titlist’s case, however, his meteoric rise is undermined a tad by the razor-close decision in his championship victory over Edgar at UFC 144.

At least some observers think Edgar rightly should have gotten the nod in that bout and people who subscribe to the old adage that it's necessary to “take” the title off a standing champion might be able to make a convincing case that Edgar is still the best lightweight on the planet. That matchmakers granted him an immediate rematch against Henderson at UFC 150 only adds fuel to that argument.

Michael Chandler is the undefeated 155-pound champion of Bellator and the 26-year-old Xtreme Couture product has spent the last couple of years laying waste to most of the competition in MMA’s highest profile mid-major organization. His title victory over Eddie Alvarez was a fight of the year candidate for 2011, but the back-and-forth nature of that affair’s three-plus rounds might lead some to wonder if Chandler is truly even the best lightweight in his own promotion right now. As long as Bellator doesn’t move to set up a Chandler-Alvarez rematch, instead appearing content to book its champ in quizzical, non-title fights against guys like Akihiro Gono, we might never know how good Chandler actually is.

Since that loss in November, Alvarez might have the least compelling case as a legitimate world No. 1, but nonetheless still deserves to be in the discussion. Prior to that defeat, he’d won seven fights in a row dating back to 2008 and last month followed up the loss of his Bellator title by dispatching erstwhile top-10 lightweight Shinya Aoki (also the last guy to beat Alvarez prior to Chandler) in just two minutes, 14 seconds. Alvarez is just barely hanging onto his own top 10 spot in the latest ESPN.com rankings, but remains the sort of guy who could beat any other lightweight on the list on any given night.

You can’t have a conversation about who's the best without at least mentioning his name.

Then there’s Melendez, who can likely make the best case for the top spot of any non-UFC fighter. At 20-2, he too is undefeated since 2008 and has avenged both his career losses during that current stretch. In his last four fights, Melendez has looked every bit the part of the world’s best lightweight but, similar to Chandler in Bellator, Strikeforce just doesn’t have the clout to offer him many new an interesting tests, especially with Zuffa still opting not to lessen its own glut of lightweights by sending them Melendez’s way.

At this point, it seems the most Strikeforce can do is book him into an endless series of rematches against Josh Tompson. They’ll fight for a third time on May 19 and if Melendez wins, his tenure in Strikeforce will seem more pointless and maddening than ever.

Should Melendez lose? Well, that seems like an even worse outcome.

Lightweight remains the most vibrant and hotly-contested weight class in our sport, but it’s also the most maddening, considering the wealth of high-level talent spread out over numerous promotions. There are enough contenders jockeying for position in the UFC alone to keep us busy for the next few months, but the question of who can lay legitimate claim to the 155-pound throne will be too-close-to-call until all the top fighters congregate under the same banner.

Until then, at least we know who has Nate Diaz’s vote.

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- When Nate Diaz bolted the 155-pound division 2½ years ago, he had lost three of four fights and was in need of a change. He tried to kick-start his career as a welterweight; and yet, after four fights there, he went 2-2.

For as promising as his UFC career started -- going 5-0 after winning Season 5 of "The Ultimate Fighter" -- people weren’t talking about Diaz after his one-sided beatdown at UFC 129 against Rory MacDonald at UFC 129.

Nick Diaz’s little brother had essentially plateaued.

Yet on Saturday night, in just his third fight in his reimagining as a lightweight, Diaz is now in pole position for a title shot in what might be the promotion’s most competitive division. His second-round submission of New Jersey native Jim Miller put an exclamation mark on his latest run. Diaz tapped out the hometown hero with a guillotine choke -- on national television, no less.

To put that in perspective, consider this: Nobody -- not Gray Maynard, not Frankie Edgar, not Benson Henderson -- has ever stopped Miller (now 10-3 in the UFC).

“I just trained hard for the fight, and I just went in there and fought hard and it went good,” said a terse Diaz at the postfight news conference.

Indeed he did. Saturday was the night that Nate Diaz truly arrived. And talk about a turn of events -- who would have thought six months ago that, when discussing a Diaz in a title fight, it would be Nate instead of Nick.

But that’s where we’re at. Since returning to lightweight, Nate Diaz finished Takanori Gomi, landed a record number of strikes against Donald Cerrone and now became the first fighter to finish Miller. What’s up with the resurgence?

To hear him say it, it’s all about pushing the right buttons in training.

“I’m getting matchups with top contenders at lightweight, and that’s a little motivating,” he told ESPN.com. “It’s hard to stay motivated and fight somebody that nobody knows, who you’re kind of more popular than. I don’t mean to sound like I’m all popular, but sometimes it’s hard when everybody expects you to win. I like fighting a top contender and being counted out.

“I feel it in training,” he said. “[Miller] is supposed to beat me? We’ll see.”

The Stockton native will likely be an underdog in his next fight, too. It was announced tonight that the new No. 1 contender in the 155-pound division will wait out the Edgar/Henderson bout to face the winner, even if the fight takes place very late in 2012.

“He’s going to wait for the title shot,” Dana White said. When asked about waiting, Diaz simply replied, “I’m down for whatever, but [waiting] sounded great to me.”

And, just like it was for Henderson, beating Miller was the way to a title shot. Miller said the game plan was to pressure Diaz and make move backward while staying out of his range.

Easier said than done. Miller couldn’t get anything going in the first round and got caught in a scramble that led to him tapping in the second. Afterward, Miller doffed his cap to Diaz’s superior game plan.

“He fought a beautiful fight, and he had my number,” Miller said of Diaz.

Diaz has had everybody’s number that he’s faced since returning to lightweight. Perhaps he said it best himself in the postfight news conference.

“Yeah, he’s tough,” he said. “It was him or me, and I’m glad it went the way it did. Guess I got lucky, just my time to shine, I guess.”

SAITAMA, Japan -- Watching Ben Henderson lift the lightweight title from Frankie Edgar at UFC 144, one truth became apparent over and over again.

Edgar was just too small for this fight.

I don’t want to sum up everything with this one sentence. It’s not that Edgar is incapable of beating Henderson. In fact, some thought he did enough to earn the decision -- although none of the three judges scoring the fight were among those.

And it’s not that size alone won Henderson the fight. The new 155-pound champion improves between each fight. He showed new levels of his game again in this win. His has no glaring holes. He is a deserving candidate for top 10 pound-for-pound.

Maybe an appropriate way to sum up what happened Sunday morning in Japan was to say that two equally skilled martial artists met in the Octagon -- and the larger one won.

Edgar, who said multiple times after the contest that he felt he deserved the decision, downplayed any challenges Henderson’s size presented.

“He’s no bigger than all the other guys I’ve fought,” Edgar said. “He was big and strong but nothing that I felt overwhelmed with or anything like that.”

Here’s what we’re looking at. Henderson stands 5-foot-9 and cuts a considerable amount of weight to make the 155 limit. His cut starts, really, weeks before an event. Typically, he’s known to shed all clothing at a weigh-in in an effort to remove every ounce possible.

Edgar is 5-6 and cuts nothing. When asked how much weight he’s losing for these events, his response was “zero.” Even to cut to 145, Edgar said, “I’d have to cut a little, but not a whole lot.”

In the cage Sunday, Henderson looked a full weight class bigger than Edgar. Up to this point, Edgar has fought that disadvantage in size with speed and endurance -- but those are two areas Henderson is also known for.

Edgar is such a talent he’s made up for one of the bigger disadvantages one can face in combat sports for years. But in this matchup against a guy who could match him in other key areas, the size was huge.

Throughout the fight, Edgar took Henderson down, got in his guard, but could not keep him there for any extended amount of time. Multiple times he was in position to take Henderson’s back, but failed to do so mostly because he had no leverage.

In the fifth round, he even dropped Henderson with a right hand. Again he went to take his back, latching his arms around Henderson’s waist. Against a smaller opponent, it’s likely he would have got the position. With Henderson, however, Edgar could not rotate around his body and maintain control. Henderson ended up recovering and breaking away.

“I’ve been saying that about him every fight,” said UFC president Dana White, regarding Edgar’s size disadvantage. “I’ve been asking the kid to go to 145 for a long time.”

It’s a move Edgar has resisted for obvious reasons. His rise through the lightweight division was unexpected by many and he’s shown enough heart along the way that he has many calling him the toughest athlete in the UFC.

After the fight, he was noncommittal about what his next move would be -- but it certainly seemed he wanted an immediate second crack at Henderson. When asked his thoughts about that opportunity potentially going to Anthony Pettis, he pointed to the rematches he took against B.J. Penn and Gray Maynard.

“I’m not trying to shoot anybody out of anything they deserve, but I had to do two immediate rematches,” Edgar said. “What’s right?”

Until now, there was not a good enough reason for Edgar to leave the division. But after this loss, the time has come for him to compete in his normal weight class.

His run in the lightweight division was fascinating and, hopefully, will become historic. It’s made him an undisputable fixture in the top five pound-for-pound fighters in the world.

Take that run, now, to the featherweight division. There is a reason that cutting weight is such a standard process in combat sports.

And realistically, the opportunity to leave his legacy on the sport is greater as a 145-pounder. He is an obvious opponent for Brazilian star Jose Aldo and would certainly have a shot at holding the belt a long time -- without potentially taking years off his career by constantly fighting bigger opponents.

“I’m never a big fan of guys fighting out of their weight class,” White said. “It’s going to be up to him, but I’d love to see him do it. It’s hard to argue when the kid has done so many great things.

“I would love to see him move to 145 and I think he’d be a force to be reckoned with."

For the first time since he became the UFC’s lightweight champion, Frankie Edgar is the betting favorite heading into a fight. From the Vegas perspective, the time of feel-good flukes is over -- this time, Edgar is getting love where he normally just gets overlooked.

And when you glance at the tape, why not? Edgar has gone 3-0-1 against two guys in the past two years. But the guys he’s beaten weren’t just guys. They were oppressors of the 155-pound division: Gray Maynard, who entered the cage a behemoth next to Edgar, at least 15 pounds heavier; and B.J. Penn, who left the cage with no future in the division and no answer for the man who had plenty.

Edgar batted back two fast-encroaching forces of momentum, and he did it twice apiece. For the past couple of years, Edgar has been making guys redundant.

And that’s the kind of drama that feels too good to be true.

Now Edgar is getting set to face Benson Henderson: a dynamic, athletic, comet-shrieking member of the division who, as an underdog, becomes a tempting choice to dethrone the pride of New Jersey. This is how it goes. Most people who are taking Edgar are speaking in universals, saying things like, “I’ll never bet against Edgar again.” These people are letting you know they have learned their lesson. They believe now. In what, exactly? That Edgar’s own belief is a near tangible. That Edgar won’t lose -- because he can’t.

Yet there are still cynics who can’t fathom how a natural featherweight, who doesn’t cut but two loaves of bread to make 155 pounds, can continue beating guys the way he does. How can you take brute punishment against Maynard and come back, twice, in an eerie loop of sequences? How can you beat Penn with flickering jabs, fancy footwork and impossible determination ... twice?

Nobody ordinary can do this. But Edgar does. Edgar is cut from the same cloth as the iron-chinned post-war boxers who made heart the overriding component. For everyone who backs the latest head of steam, be cautious: Edgar is where momentum goes to die.

That’s why this feeling that Edgar has more to prove than Henderson at UFC 144 in Japan is literally backward, and yet partially true. Edgar has proved himself as a champion and as one of the best pound-for-pound fighters going. Now Edgar could be working on proving that he’s the greatest lightweight champion ever. If that sounds like a stretch of the imagination, then we’re right in Edgar’s wheelhouse.

Think about it: A victory over Henderson would be enough to tip him over into that rarefied space. At least, conversationally. In the short history of MMA, who would have had a better run? Penn was tremendous for the three years between 2007-2010. He defended the belt three times with a cameo superfight at welterweight with Georges St. Pierre. Then he ran into Frankie Edgar, the little impasse that could.

Takanori Gomi was a force for a long while in Pride, but the competition he faced wasn’t like Edgar’s. Jens Pulver defended his belt twice, but he has been in a career free fall since 2006.

There are other mentionables, but none as pronounced as Edgar, who has a chance to defy logic on an even larger scale come Saturday.

And wouldn’t that be just like him to do it? A guy with no business fighting in MMA’s most competitive division has a real chance of becoming its ultimate kingpin.

Editor’s note: Next week, the ESPN MMA page will roll out it's official end-of-they year awards. With winners in each of the most popular categories seemingly pretty clear cut, however, ESPN staffers Chuck Mindenhall and Chad Dundas will take the final week of 2011 to offer up a few “alternative” choices. To lead things off on Monday, the granddaddy of them all: "Fight of the year."

According to most fans and analysts, the 2011 fight of the year essentially boils down to a three-horse race between Dan Henderson versus Mauricio “Shogun” Rua at UFC 139, Eddie Alvarez versus Michael Chandler at Bellator 58 and Frankie Edgar versus Gray Maynard III from UFC 136.

To that, we say: Bah, humbug.

All three of the above are stellar picks, but we’d be loath honor them at the expense of a few others. There was landmark action inside cages the world over during 2011, so here are a couple of “alternative” options for the all-important Fight of the year ...

Chad Dundas’ pick: Clay Guida versus Ben Henderson at UFC on Fox, Nov. 12 in Anaheim, Calif.

As Octagon-centric FOTY candidates are concerned, it doesn’t get much more “alternative” than Guida versusHenderson, a bout seen only on the Internet and by the live crowd at Honda Center despite the fact it took place on the same card as the UFC’s first live broadcast on network television.

Leading up to the groundbreaking event, Henderson promised that he and Guida would steal the show from heavyweights Cain Velasquez and Junior dos Santos. And guess what? They did. Especially after dos Santos knocked out Velasquez just 64 seconds into their televised main event.

While the big guys called it quits early, lightweights Guida and Henderson gave MMA fans just about everything they could want from a fight. There were wild flurries on the feet and madcap scrambles on the ground, as the pair set the pace in the first with a high-octane striking exchange that saw Henderson drop Guida with a punch. In the second, Guida stormed back and scored with a spinning back fist so out of the blue that it seemed to surprise Guida himself, sending the Chicago native stumbling across the cage. In the third, Henderson fired off a crazy Taekwondo-style axe kick which barely missed. Down the stretch, Guida threatened with a guillotine attempt so tight, it likely would’ve finished any normal human being.

All the while, hair flew like the dickens.

When it was over, Henderson emerged with a unanimous decision win that netted him the chance to take on Edgar for the 155-pound title on Feb. 26 at UFC 144. Guida was defeated on the cards, but emerged with a “Fight of the night” bonus and the satisfaction of participating in perhaps the best fight of the year that nobody got to see.

Chuck Mindenhall’s pick: Dan Henderson versus Fedor Emelianenko in Strikeforce, July 30, 2011 in Hoffman Estates, Ill.

In talking about Henderson and Rua’s five-round war, we forget about the member’s club entertainment that went on with Henderson-Fedor back in July. There was a romantic context to this one similar to Henderson’s UFC 139 battle with Rua; he and Emelianenko were longtime parallel champions in Pride who’d never had the inclination (publicly) to smash one another. Strikeforce dubbed it a heavyweight superfight -- neither man had ever been knocked out, and yet both had stupidly powerful right hands. Hendo barely made the heavyweight minimum, while Fedor looked in the best shape of his life.

When the bell rang, Emelianenko came out swinging. Henderson, always cooperative for this kind of request, dropped his head and swung back. It was a manic first minute. After some long moments in a Greco clinch, when they separated Emelianenko dropped Henderson with a left uppercut/overhand right combo and jumped on him in a heap. Fedor rained down the would-be finishing punches that ended up lulling the eye a little bit, as Henderson was very quietly grabbing onto Emelianenko’s right leg and executing his escape.

What happened next was the sneakiest turn of events of the year; while he slipped out the hatch Henderson threw a right uppercut through Fedor’s armpit that knocked him out. The follow-up right hand woke him back up, but it was too late as Herb Dean jumped in there and signalled the copter. This all happened in the space of ten seconds. When asked what he called the move afterwards, Henderson said very simply, “wrestling” -- his answer as terse as the sequence. It was the first time Emelianenko had ever knocked out, and it added to Henderson’s lore.

Coming on Tuesday: "Alternative" Submission of the year

When the UFC went to Rio de Janeiro in August, it was a spiritual homecoming. A lot of time had passed since the salad days of 1998, and a grown-up UFC was crashing back triumphantly to the land that bore its earliest fruits.

That meant UFC 134 -- more commonly referred to as UFC Rio -- became a celebration of Gracie genealogy, of the Nogueira’s, of assorted Silva’s, of Chute Boxe, of the entire neglected culture of limb origamists everywhere who were so instrumental in changing the way people approached fighting. There were a dozen bouts on the card. Only one fight didn’t have a Brazilian in it, an out-of-place clash between Yves Jabouin (French-Canadian) and Ian Loveland (American). Smartly, that was the first prelim of the night, designed to play out while people found their seats.

Otherwise, it was Brazilian pandemonium. In a Brazil against the world scenario, a Brazilian had his hand raised in 10 of the remaining 11 bouts. It was all about Brazil and its best fighters. The Cariocas were whipped into a frenzy that night.

UFC 144 is official for Feb. 26 at the Saitama Super Arena, and it’s been simplified to UFC Japan. This, too, is a homecoming of sorts to the native roots. As Lorenzo Fertitta talked about the old recipes in a press release, saying, “Japan is the spiritual home of martial arts -- the world has learned from the Japanese many aspects of how to compete in hand-to-hand combat with respect and honor.” This parlays nicely with the UFC Rio vibe, which courted a similar muse. If there’s a difference, it’s this -- Japan may be a spiritual home of martial arts, but not its best practitioners. There are scant few Japanese fighters on UFC Japan’s main card.

In fact, there’s only one: Yoshihiro Akiyama. And he’s on there because he’s fighting a big name in Jake Shields in a new weight class (170 pounds) after losing three in a row as a middleweight. This is a curiosity bout for a man in search of lost mojo.

Otherwise, UFC Japan’s main card is all about the imports. Why? Because it has to be. Frankie Edgar from Jersey, against Colorado's own Ben Henderson for the lightweight belt. Pride star Quinton Jackson returns to Japan to fight wrestler Ryan Bader, who jumped at the opportunity to fight in Japan (just as he did in 2010 when the opportunity to do battle with Keith Jardine in Sydney arose). A re-imagined Mark Hunt takes on Frenchman Cheick Kongo in a heavyweight fight. Americans Anthony Pettis and Joe Lauzon round out the card in a lightweight bout.

Where’s Yushin Okami, the man Dana White called “the best fighter to ever come out of Japan” ahead of his fight with Anderson Silva in Rio? He’s on the prelims against revivalist Tim Boetsch. Okami headlines a fight in Rio as a stranger in a strange land (read: as prey for Anderson Silva), yet can’t crack the main card in his native Japan. It doesn’t help that there’s a very real chance of a stylistic stalemate in this one, but the point is this -- the best fighter to come out of Japan doesn’t exactly carry the importance that the imports do.

Same goes for the “Iron Broom” Hatsu Hioki, who underwhelmed in his debut victory against George Roop. He’s on the prelims, even if it is a No. 1 contender spot he’s fighting for against Bart Palaszewski. Ditto the “Fireball Kid,” Takanori Gomi (1-3 in his last four), Norifumi Yamamoto (1-4 in his last five), Riki Fukuda (coming off a loss to Nick Ring) and Takeya Mizugaki (who has traded wins and losses in his last eight bouts). All of these guys had successful careers in Japan that haven’t yet translated to the Octagon. In fact, some of them wouldn’t be on the roster if there wasn’t going to be such a thing as UFC Japan, so there’s no room for quibbling about placement.

Unlike with UFC Rio, UFC Japan won’t (and can’t) be painted as "Japan Against the World." It’s more like the world coming to Japan for an exciting visit. If the UFC dotted the main card with the best Japanese fighters -- which taken as a collective, would look like wholesale mediocrity -- it wouldn’t be fit for pay-per-view. And, as Dana White reminds everyone whenever possible, this is pay-per-view business.

Therefore, Frankie Edgar and Quinton Jackson will fetch the PPV buck as the UFC forays into Asia, and the local fighters will try and change a few notions in the relative quiet of their own backyard.

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- Call it perhaps the best, least-watched fight ever.

Unless you were one of the comparatively few fans who tuned in online, or among the 14,000 who came out in person on Saturday night for the UFC on Fox, you might’ve missed Ben Henderson and Clay Guida steal the show.

If so, that’s a shame. Those lucky enough to lay eyes on it may have witnessed the fight of the year.

“The reason I fight is to put smiles on people’s faces and to get people cheering ...,” Guida said when it was over. “It was a stellar fight. We came out of the gates swinging. I’m not satisfied with my performance [but] we went out there and gave the crowd what they wanted.”

That they did, whipping the live audience at the Honda Center into a fury as their lightweight appetizer arguably outperformed the heavyweight main course. As their three-round battle built from its chaotic beginning to a frenzied conclusion in a clear-cut decision win for Henderson, you could almost feel the week-long whispers become a consensus.

This fight should have been on TV.

That it wasn’t, of course, was nobody’s fault. Time constraints of the UFC’s hour-long debut on network television made showing more than one fight impractical and the call was made some time ago that, no matter what, only Junior dos Santos and Cain Velasquez would see the light of national TV exposure.

Leading up to the fight, Guida and Henderson both did their best to downplay any disappointment about being relegated to the Internet streams. Both guys said the only thing that mattered was winning. For his part, Henderson said he’d get even by putting on a fight that would make the UFC wish it would’ve been on television.

From the outside looking in, it seemed he did that and more. Ever the fighter though, Henderson came away unmoved by a performance that made him the No.1 contender for the lightweight title.

“If a guy slips on a puddle of water and falls down and I get the W, I’ll take it,” he said. “But was I happy with my performance? To be honest, no. I can do a lot better than that. I can do a lot better than that. You guys haven’t seen anything yet.”

Hard not to see some irony in that last sentence.

While the heavyweights went out and did what heavyweights do -- finish up in 64 seconds -- in front of millions, the two 155-pounders once again underscored why the lighter-weight classes are MMA’s most dependably exciting. Albeit in front of a much smaller audience.

Their fight had wild flurries on the feet and near-miss submission attempts on the ground. Guida twice got dropped to the canvas with strikes, but later threatened Henderson with a tight guillotine. Guida landed a crazy spinning backfist and a few minutes afterward, Henderson tried an even crazier axe kick. At one point, Guida simply tumbled across the cage in a move that defies all description.

In short, their fight was just what Henderson wanted it to be -- the kind that might make Dana White think twice about leaving lightweights off the next network broadcast.

You know, just as soon as he gets the chance to watch it.

“I was on TV. I was working, I didn’t get to see it,” the UFC President said at the postfight media conference. “I kept turning around and looking at the fight. It sounded exciting.”

Take it from those who did watch: It was.

When the lightweight title picture was in a knot early this summer, Benson Henderson was on the distant outside -- so far outside, in fact, he couldn’t even look in. Ahead of him were Jim Miller, Melvin Guillard, Anthony Pettis, Clay Guida and a theoretical wild card in Gilbert Melendez, who was actively lobbying to come over to the UFC from Strikeforce. Meanwhile, Gray Maynard and Frankie Edgar took nine long months to play out while all the back-breathing competition played musical chairs.

As we roll through fall, Henderson emerges as the No. 1 contender in the division by beating Guida in a purposefully downplayed eliminator. It’s an improbable scenario: his acceleration toward Edgar was as stealthy as it was impressive. And for as quiet as he made his way, he couldn’t have been louder in how he did it.

Henderson dominated Miller for three rounds to scramble the contenders back up, then methodically engaged a dervish-like Guida and showcased his entire range. Guida-Henderson was everything people suspected it would be -- back and forth, wire-to-wire action with shutter speed reversals of fortune and whiplashing hair.

It was the greatest fight to ever be as neglected. While millions tuned in for the network debut of the UFC on Fox, Guida-Henderson was relegated to Facebook and Fox Sports en Espanol. The promotion’s deepest division finally found clarity, while its most glamorous -- the heavyweights -- stole the spotlight.

In an early exchange, Henderson downed Guida, who looked to brawl from the get-go like he did with Diego Sanchez when the two met in June 2009. When Guida dug in to toil on the fence, grabbing the double-leg takedown that doomed Pettis -- defaulting to the wrestling that got him here -- Henderson turned into Plastic Man. At one point in the first round, Henderson did a full split to keep from going on his back. That’s a rubberband man component that changes leverage perceptions and maddens game plans.

In the rare times Guida got him down, Henderson was back on his feet in moments. When Guida went for his neck on a couple of occasions, guillotines that for brief moments looked dangerous, Henderson would end up in his own dominant position seconds later. Near the end of the second round, he went from his neck being hung to a body triangle and threatening a rear-naked choke of his own in a few dizzying moments. The whole fight passed in a such a way. Henderson just had too much in his arsenal for Guida to keep up.

After taking the fight unanimously -- 30-27 twice, 29-28 -- Henderson made his call out, saying, “Frankie Edgar, we’ve got a date -- let’s do it baby.” And that’s where we have arrived after a bottleneck 2011 at 155 pounds. The former WEC lightweight champion is making a play for the UFC strap. Not that long ago he was on the wrong end of a highlight reel to Pettis’ Showtime kick in the final WEC show; now he looks like the definitive challenger to Edgar.

And that’s something we haven’t been able to contemplate all year, just who would be the next to challenge for the lightweight belt. Now we know it’s Henderson, who has fought eight of his nine Zuffa battles on free television or on Internet feeds. Here’s guessing this becomes the end of an era, that the UFC will make a "Smooth" transition to pay-per-view from here on out.

ROSEMEAD, Calif. -- Had there been a style competition at Thursday’s UFC on Fox open workouts, Ben Henderson would’ve been the clear winner.

Perhaps to underscore the confidence (or maybe the irritation) he’s feeling before Saturday’s untelevised fight against Clay Guida, Henderson conducted the entirety of his 30-minute public workout inside the sprawling UFC Gym with a toothpick casually dangling out the corner of his mouth.

As he goes in search of his third win in the Octagon this weekend, the former WEC lightweight champion appears to have settled into a groove as a full-fledged UFC fighter. Though he said it was news to him that some oddsmakers see him as a 2-1 favorite over Guida, there seems to be an added swagger about Henderson this week.

Hence, maybe, the toothpick.

“I’m as confident as any fighter out there,” he says. “All fighters are pretty confident by nature, that’s just how we are. I’m just as confident as any fighter in the UFC. I think [oddsmakers] would be wise to pick me against anybody, but that’s just me being a fighter.”

Their fight is assumed to be a title eliminator, but the time constraints of the UFC’s first, hour-long broadcast on the Fox Network have relegated Henderson and Guida to the Internet undercard. If Henderson is feeling any frustrations about that, he said he would take them out inside the cage.

“Some way, somehow this fight will make it to air, even if it’s afterwards or whatever,” Henderson says. “Dana [White] will want to put this one on primetime television ... I’ll make sure of that.”

Guida’s shot overdue?

Guida’s path to potential No. 1 contender status has been long and more than a little bit roundabout.

During 15 fights in the Octagon and a five-year tenure with the UFC, he’s won "Fight of the night" honors five times, "Submission of the night" twice and "Fight of the year" twice. He’s also lost five times, most recently in back-to-back defeats to Diego Sanchez and Kenny Florian in 2009. After running his current win streak to four during the last 20 months, however, he could finally earn his first shot at UFC gold if he defeats Henderson this weekend.

Can’t blame him for not wanting to let that chance slip away.

“I’m going to get my shot no matter what, man,” Guida says. “I’m going out guns slinging and I’m going to show the UFC and the rest of the world that I’m the legitimate No. 1 contender ... It’s been a long time coming -- five years -- and I’m going to put on a show.”

JDS’ philosophy: Work hard, be nice

Compared to Guida, Junior dos Santos’ rise through the ranks has been a somewhat meteoric one. At 27 years old, he says he’s only been training in MMA for about the past five years. But after breezing through his first seven fights in the UFC, he now stands on the brink of a heavyweight title shot against Cain Velasquez in what might turn out to be the most-watched UFC fight of all time.

What’s his secret?

“Hard work,” the jovial dos Santos explains. “And being nice.”

Dos Santos’ ever-present grin has told much of the tale this week. He contends that he doesn’t feel any added pressure prior to this highest of high-profile fights against the undefeated, No. 1-ranked heavyweight in the world. On the contrary, he’s just excited.

“Like I used to say, when you are nice, nice things happen to you,” dos Santos says. “I like to be nice, but when I come to fight inside the Octagon, I take that very seriously ... I think it's very important to keep your emotions in control. The goal inside the cage is to win the fight, so you have to keep your focus on that. That’s what I try to do. I just want to win the fight. I don't want to hurt my opponent and I don’t want to hurt myself, I just want to win.”

Velasquez has dos Santos scouted

Even before dos Santos bested Shane Carwin in their No. 1 contender bout at UFC 131, Cain Velasquez had been keeping an eye on him. After watching the talented Brazilian march through an increasingly difficult gauntlet of 265-pound foes during his three years in the UFC, it seems like the champ has known for some time that dos Santos could be trouble.

Then again, keeping tabs on the competition is essentially Velasquez’s job.

“I just look at all the heavyweights out there,” he says. “You’ve got to do your homework, you’ve got to watch all the fights. That’s what I do, you know? Once I see a heavyweight out there, I’m going to do my homework.”

Perhaps that preparation is one of the reasons Velasquez has been the picture of calm this week. While he’s been highly complementary of dos Santos’ skills -- especially his boxing and takedown defense -- the American Kickboxing Academy product appears to believe he has victory well in hand.

“He’s impressive every time he goes out there and fights,” Velasquez says. “We’ve got our work cut out for us, but I think we’ve got this one.”

LOS ANGELES -- Less than a week prior to a potentially career-defining fight against Ben Henderson, Clay Guida finished his last heavy training day by putting a treadmill to the test while watching the Chicago Bears rally to defeat the Philadelphia Eagles on Monday night.

"We're seeing signs of improvements from the Bears," Guida, an Illinois native, beamed two days later.

If nothing else, the game provided a momentary distraction from what's otherwise played out in Guida's mind leading up to a bout as important as Saturday's in Anaheim, Calif. Guida's upcoming clash against Henderson for the right to challenge UFC lightweight champion Frankie Edgar is as good a shot as he's had in his career to reaching the pinnacle of his division.

Searching for his third win of 2011 and his fifth straight inside the UFC, Guida, 29, has fought under the UFC banner for five years, and while he's enjoyed some solid runs, nothing compares to his current streak.

Guida credits his resurgence to "becoming a student of the game again."

What got me here? My wrestling," Guida said. "What's going to escalate me to that lightweight title? My ground game, my wrestling."

That back-to-his-roots mentality has a lot to do with a change in attitude after consecutive losses to Diego Sanchez and Kenny Florian in 2009. Not to be overlooked: Guida's decision to move his training camp to Jackson's MMA in Albuquerque. The impact of training with Greg Jackson, Mike Winkeljohn and others at Jackson's, Guida said, has been key to his redevelopment.

A decade ago Guida was similarly familiar with putting in long hours on the job in Albuquerque. He worked construction at a K-Mart in New Mexico's largest town, rebuilding a fitting room for a company based out of Chicago. These days, Guida (29-11) isn't shy about acknowledging how fortunate he considers himself. He's doing what he loves, and he does it well.

"I've been thinking about how things have come full circle," he said. "It's either I'm doing this or living on a fishing boat or framing houses.

Guida isn't kidding. He's done both and were he to cobble together a résumé, should he ever need to assemble one, it would read like a smattering of odd jobs in odd places. That is, until he found MMA. And, more specifically, the UFC.

Heading into his 15th UFC fight since October 2006, Guida is one of the staples of the company's lightweight division. His boundless energy has generally served him well, and while he's suffered five losses inside the Octagon, Guida's passion has been rewarded in kind by a strong fan reaction.

That momentum has built over the past two years. Three straight submission wins and a smart decision over dangerous Anthony Pettis in June rekindled the notion that a floppy-haired, self-described “Dude from the Big Lebowski” was a viable contender for the UFC lightweight belt

Now it’s Guida’s turn to take on Henderson (14-2), a fight that’s illuminated the imaginations of many an MMA watcher. Neither man knows what it’s like to fatigue. They're strong grapplers and willing strikers. They move forward, preferring to make opponents wilt away under the stress.

“It's like trying to submit a rubber band,” Guida said of Henderson. “His ground-and-pound is second to none."

All things considered, they're similar fighters.

With fans and media focused primarily on the card's main event, a UFC heavyweight championship contest between Cain Velasquez and Junior dos Santos, Guida's bout against Henderson has not garnered the attention it deserves. Some people who were able to shift their attention away from the anticipated heavyweight contest "are talking fight of the year accolades," Guida said. "I'm thinking about having fun and having my hand raised.

"When you get a fight with guys that push the pace until their opponent snaps under the pressure, you get an all-out war. It's a fight I think fans might get tired first. They might be exhausted, but we're going to leave them cheering for more.”

Ben Henderson has confidently predicted he can beat Clay Guida any way he wants at UFC on Fox this weekend. More »

Just looking over the inventory of possible lightweights to contend for Frankie Edgar’s belt, it came down to three names -- Gilbert Melendez, Clay Guida and Ben Henderson. That much was obvious on Saturday after Melvin Guillard fell through a hatch.

Yet, just as Melendez was getting some legs behind his campaign for the shot, Strikeforce -- of all entities! -- announced that the originally planned Jorge Masvidal fight would indeed happen on Dec. 17, just like it told us all along (tentatively, written in pencil on a piece of driftwood for everyone to see).

This was a big buzzkill for unificationists. Realistically, though, all is as it should be.

Melendez would have made -- and one day will make -- for an intriguing bout against Edgar. You’ve got the velvet rope coming down between champions, the clash of styles, East Coast versus West Coast, El Nino threatening the Jersey Shore, all of that. But right now Guida/Bendo are wearing promise rings. And if we’re talking in terms of merit, no matter which guy emerges from Nov. 12 with the victory, why, he’ll have that too.

Through no fault of his own, you’d have to jog your memory to recollect Melendez’s last fight in April. He beat Tatsuya Kawajiri at the 3:14 mark of the first round. It was a reunion with his elbows, and it was very impressive -- but that means for 2011, Melendez has fought for a very impressive three minutes and change. He fought just once in 2009, too, a five-round unanimous decision over Shinya Aoki.

Those are solid wins, but what Melendez picked up in quality he loses in quantity. Had he been booked sooner than Dec. 17, as was threatened by Strikeforce on numerous occasions, things might be different.

Guida and Henderson will each fight in their third bout of 2011 when they meet. Guida got through Anthony Pettis (the No. 1 contender at the time) and Takanori Gomi; Henderson beat Jim Miller (the No. 1 contender at the time) and Mark Bocek.

Since they both eliminated the top contender at a time when the lightweight division was being held up for ransom, they have to fight each other. The man that emerges in that fight will have traveled a long, long way to get there -- through limbos, through dimly lit passageways, through a gauntlet of guys the UFC could muster. During that time, Melendez’s biggest battle has been against ennui. He should defend his belt one more time for old time's sake because, let's face it, that belt will soon become theoretical anyway.

It's guaranteed Melendez gets on a more regular schedule with the UFC after Masvidal. And speaking of Masvidal -- the Pluto figure in "who’s next for Edgar debate" -- didn’t he beat down K.J. Noons with a vague promise that his next fight would be for the Strikeforce belt? That was in June, when things with Strikeforce were already in the advanced stages of vague. He deserves his chance to do what Guida did to Pettis, what Henderson did to Miller, and what Joe Lauzon just did to Guillard.

That is, make this whole debate laughable.

Thank you, Frankie Edgar. For a few agonizing moments, it looked as if UFC 136 was potentially headed, amazingly enough, to another draw. Instead, Edgar finished the fight in the fourth round, and the notorious logjam at 155 can get moving again.

Now, the question is what to make of said logjam. There’s a ton of talent in the lightweight division. Who earns the title shot in 2012 and who makes the most of it?

Watching Edgar through four title fights and 19 rounds, I think there are three qualities a challenger needs to beat him.

Quality 1: Endurance. The little guy doesn’t cut any weight. He is very much like a featherweight fighting at lightweight, and that means he moves well and he moves a lot. If you can’t finish him early, you better have terrific stamina, because he’ll wear you out otherwise.

Quality 2: Speed. It kills. And simple brute strength doesn’t negate it. Honestly, I thought it would. But Gray Maynard couldn’t tie Edgar up and take him down, and the speed difference showed throughout both fights. Whoever eventually beats this guy will have to somewhat match his speed.

Quality 3: Finishing efficiency. Killer instinct. Don’t just hurt him, put him away.

Keeping those in mind, and considering their current place in the division, here are the 17 lightweights that have some shot at winning the title in 2012.

The Long, Long Shots: Evan Dunham, Edson Barboza, George Sotiropoulos, Sam Stout, Tony Ferguson.

These guys make the cut but none of us really expect them to earn a title shot next year or, if somehow they do, beat Edgar. The guy I like most in this group is Ferguson. He has demonstrated serious power, and his speed allows him to recover when he makes a mistake. Sotiropoulos won seven fights in a row and yet it seemed he was never close to a title shot. Following back-to-back losses, he might need to win 15 in a row to sniff the title. Barboza is young, so maybe it’s in the cards down the road. But it's tough to see it happening next year.

The really good guys who will absolutely not get a title shot in 2012: Gray Maynard, Jim Miller.

Doesn’t matter if these two dropkick their next opponents out of the Octagon, they’re chances of entering the title picture next year are downright horrible. Maynard for the obvious reasons. I actually wouldn’t mind seeing the fourth bout between Maynard and Edgar; is that right to admit? But it’s not happening for a very, very long time. And Miller, fair or not, is one of the least marketable figures in this logjam. He wins a ridiculous amount of fights, but the fact this guy was undoubtedly the most deserving of a title shot but didn’t headline a Versus card (Hardy versus Lytle in August) shows how little faith the UFC has in him as a sellable asset. Thinking about it, these two should actually fight each other.

The favorable schedules: Dennis Siver, Joe Lauzon.

Lauzon to a far lesser extent after the Guillard win, but these two are “in the mix” despite not really having all that many signature wins. Before beating Guillard, Lauzon’s best win was what? Jens Pulver back in 2006? Gabe Ruediger? Most of the time when he stepped up in competition (Kenny Florian, Sam Stout) he lost. And Siver, listen to the names on this guy’s hit list: Matt Wiman, Sotiropoulos, Andre Winner, Spencer Fisher, Paul Kelly, Dale Hartt and Nate Mohr. Who truly impresses you there? Not saying Siver and Lauzon are incapable of winning it all, but their records don’t really scream future champ.

The wild cards: Nate Diaz, Donald Cerrone, Melvin Guillard.

All three have the skills to earn a title shot and give Edgar trouble, but man, are they inconsistent. Guillard overlooked Lauzon -- plain and simple. His aggressiveness is a good thing, but when you have no respect for your opponent’s skills, it can cost you. For all the pro-Guillard talk we’ve had lately, let’s not hold back and just admit his mental game might very well prevent him from ever holding a belt. Cerrone is on a serious roll and he has an extra dose of that killer mentality, Quality 3 we talked about earlier. But he was 0-3 in WEC title fights and built a reputation as guy who didn’t respond well, mentally, to the big ones. Diaz, we saw how good he can be in his last fight against Takanori Gomi, in which he was clearly amped about fighting a personal idol. If that Diaz shows up regularly in 2012, he has a shot at the belt.

The forgotten: Jorge Masvidal.

While everyone talks about bringing Gilbert Melendez to the UFC, nobody is talking about Gamebred, who just assaulted K.J. Noons in his last fight. Skills-wise, he’s crazy fast -- maybe the fastest at 155. Masvidal versus Edgar would be interesting.

The future champ: Anthony Pettis.

I believe 100 percent Pettis adds “UFC lightweight champion” to his Wikipedia page; I’m just not sure when. Clearly, his response to the Clay Guida loss was to work on his wrestling. A split decision win Saturday might not look great on paper, but I was impressed. We already know about his standup. We saw his evolution in this last fight. It was a very “professional” win, using the word his trainer Duke Roufus used in the corner during the fight. We’ll see if 2012 is Pettis’s year. If not, 2013 looks good.

The favorites: Clay Guida, Ben Henderson, Gilbert Melendez.

Obviously, the fact these guys are already close to a title shot doesn’t hurt. Guida is the least scary of the three. He nails Quality 1 but not so much 2 and 3. Melendez is the popular pick, which is hard to argue. He has the talent, and his chances increase dramatically if he doesn’t have a fight between now and the title. My favorite, though, is Henderson. I like him stylistically against Guida and Edgar. He’ll look huge in the cage compared to Edgar. He’s a workhorse, and his win over Jim Miller, despite ending in a decision, showed that fire-in-your-eyes crazy side we hadn’t really seen in him before. My guess is Henderson wins the UFC lightweight title in 2012.