(Frankie Edgar is looking into your soul, and he is not impressed.)

We can’t say we didn’t see this coming.  After Gray Maynard‘s lackluster win over Nate Diaz on last night’s UFC Fight Night 20, Dana White tells MMAFighting.com that Frankie Edgar will get the next shot at lightweight champ B.J. Penn, tentatively scheduled for UFC 112 in Abu Dhabi this April.  Edgar last fought at the TUF 10 Finale on December 10, where he submitted Matt Veach with a rear naked choke in the second round.  Funny, we don’t recall a chorus of voices rising up in the wake of that victory to declare Edgar the consensus number one contender, but maybe that’s just because we didn’t watch the fight in New Jersey.

But seriously, you don’t have to be a genius to figure out that Edgar earned this shot primarily by process of elimination.  After Penn smoked Diego Sanchez, it came down to Edgar or Maynard.  Fortunately for Edgar, "The Bully" managed to win in the least impressive fashion possible, so he gets the shot by default, even though Maynard ran through him with relative ease at UFC Fight Night 13. 

Is it kind of unfair that a guy Maynard beat, who’s coming off a win over a relative UFC novice, is getting the shot just because his own win wasn’t quite exciting enough?  No, it’s not kind of unfair.  It’s totally unfair.  But that’s life in the fight game.  Video of Dana White explaining the thin rationale behind the fight, as well as why he decided to sell 10% of his company essentially to the government of Abu Dhabi, is after the jump.