When Cub Swanson last faced Frankie Edgar in 2014, it was a lopsided affair that did not go his way and ended by way of submission with only four seconds remaining in the fifth and final round.

Three-and-a-half years later, Swanson has an opportunity to right the ship in another contest with Edgar in the co-main event of this weekend’s UFC Fight Night card in Atlantic City, N.J., situated less than an hour from Edgar’s hometown of Toms River, a small city of approximately 100,000.

At UFC 222 in February, Edgar suffered the first knockout loss of his career that started with a brutal elbow from the now top-ranked featherweight Brian Ortega.

After the loss, Edgar said that he wanted to fight in front of his hometown crowd, with the UFC was scheduled to visit Atlantic City just six weeks later. This proposition has been a hot topic in mixed martial arts circles with most agreeing that it’s too soon for the 36-year-old to compete after suffering a knockout loss.

Swanson hesitantly agrees Edgar may be diving back into competition too quickly.

“It’s very possible, yes. I don’t want to put that on it and think that myself going into the fight, because I think that would be a mistake for myself. It is possible that he’s taking the fight too soon, but I have to go in there thinking that it’s going to be the best Frankie Edgar that we’ve seen and I’m expecting that,” Swanson told The TSN MMA Show.

“If I get that big win and people are just going to be saying, ‘Oh, well he came back too soon’ and maybe downplay my skills out there, so hopefully they won’t read too much into it and expect the best Frankie like I do.”

Regardless of Edgar’s willingness to compete so soon after the loss, Swanson relishes the opportunity to right a wrong that has plagued his mind since it happened.

“He wanted to get back in there and make it right after his loss and he wanted to fight in his hometown and I think they were having trouble finding an opponent, so they reached out to me,” said Swanson. “For me, it’s been about 30,000 hours since we fought before and it’s always been painful for me to think about, so when they offered it to me, I was like ‘hell yeah’. I want this fight back, I know I can beat him, I know I can do better and I want to show everybody.”

Losing is not something that Swanson has ever been comfortable with and he still hasn’t gotten over an eight-second loss to former featherweight champion Jose Aldo that happened about nine years ago.

“It’s been a fight that’s been close to being made a few times, circumstances just kept it from happening and I thought I was closer to getting a rematch with him than a rematch with Frankie,” said Swanson. “I think with him being a champion for so long and not being a champion right now, I think it depends on his fight with Jeremy Stephens. If he loses, I don’t know how much he’ll want to stick around. He’s had a good career already. If he sticks around, for sure I think we’ll fight at some point.”

A lot has changed in Swanson’s life since the loss. He recently became a father to his first child, a daughter named Royal Rae. He has also relocated his camp to the Treigning Lab in Laguna Hills, Calif., where he trains with some of the best fighters in the game today.

“My main two training partners have been Juan Archuleta, who just signed with Bellator, he’s a phenomenal wrestler and TJ Dillashaw, who also wrestled and has good striking as well. Just drilling with these guys, the way that we drill, we drill like we’re sparring. It’s very controlled, but very intense,” Swanson said.

“We kind of break it up into two parts with our training. We have the MMA side with our coaches and all the fighters and then the conditioning and diet side is all Sam Calavitta, who is really the main guy in the Treigning Lab. He does tons of work, he’s a mathematician and he trains himself in iron man. He knows his stuff and he puts so much work into things like our heart rate when we sleep at night to how our body’s burning fats and carbs and how much weight we’re dropping and making sure it’s the right weight gradually and not just this huge dump at the end.

“The strength and conditioning is very brutal, but it’s very calculated and sometimes we’re doing two-and-a-half-hour sessions and the guys that we’re competing with next to me, like Aaron Pico, Juan Archeleta, TJ, we compete,” said Swanson. “Every little session, we’re like who’s doing more, who’s doing better, who gets there first, just the environment is great and it’s pushing me to new heights, physically.”

After Swanson’s last fight, a loss to Ortega that happened less than three months before Edgar’s loss, his return to the promotion was not a foregone conclusion as he entered free agency, but the bright lights of the UFC and the high level of competition on top of a bump in pay swayed him to return.

“I talked to a bunch of different people, like pretty much everybody, and I was getting really good offers. It just kind of came down to where I was going to be happy and I think with some of the top people, it might have been more of a job than the passion of fighting on the biggest stage and all that stuff,” said Swanson. “I decided that as long as the UFC was willing to make me a better offer that I would come back. And they called me, literally at the same time that I had that discussion with my manager, and they made me a better offer and offered me this fight and I said ‘all right, let’s do it.’ ”

At age 34, Swanson has made his goals clear for this next chapter of his UFC career.

“It’s simple. I just want to put on great fights and take every fight individually and make sure that I put out the best performance possible. I think the fans expect that of me and I want to give them that. And then on my end it’s just about securing my legacy and making some cash and making sure that I’m set for the rest of my life,” Swanson said.

Another thing that Swanson is looking for is avenging his UFC losses, which have all come against top featherweight competition, namely Edgar and Aldo.

“They’re both right there at the top of bothering me a lot. I think all of my losses bother me a lot. I know I can beat both of them and I’ve just been waiting for my opportunity.”

Cub Swanson fights Frankie Edgar in the co-main event of UFC Fight Night: Barboza vs. Lee in Atlantic City, NJ this Saturday. The main card airs at 10 pm ET on TSN5.