Edgar Vs. Henderson Official, Smooth 'Very Excited' For That Fight

Former WEC lightweight champion Benson "Smooth" Henderson continued his rapid climb up the UFC lightweight ranks last night, knocking off another top contender in Clay Guida in the co-main event of UFC on Fox: Velasquez vs. Dos Santos.

As many predicted, the fight turned into a barnburner, with both men going for broke throughout the entire three rounds that they fought to garner Fight of the Night honors. In the end, Henderson proved himself to be the better fighter and took home a unanimous decision victory as well as a guaranteed (well, as much as these things ever are) shot at UFC lightweight champion Frankie Edgar. Looking ahead, Bendo is excited for the match-up and confident in his abilities over Edgar's, but he admits that he'll need to keep things a little tighter against the champion.

"I think it's a great match-up," Henderson said of his fight with Edgar. "Obviously, I'm as confident as any other fighter here at the press conference, any fighter in the UFC - I'm very confident. As far as matching up with Frankie, I definitely have to do a better job of sticking to the gameplan. Hat's off to Clay, he did a great job, drew me into his style of fight. I wanted to be more technical, I wanted to be more precise. Clay did a great job of making it more of a brawl, a wrestling match - which is fine by me, if you wanna go that route, I'll go that route - but I wanted to be more precise, more technical. With Frankie, I think I match up very well, I just have to stick to the gameplan, do a little bit better job of that. But, I'm very excited for that, Frankie and I are going to put on a great show."

Henderson and Edgar are slated to meet in the main event of UFC 144, which will take place at the Saitama Super Arena in Saitama, Japan, marking the UFC's first trip back to the Land of the Rising Sun since UFC 29 back in 2000.

Mark Wayne is the head writer for FightLine.com. He can be followed on Twitter at http://twitter.com/_MarkWayne.