UFC 278: Leon Edwards discusses his troubled childhood, MMA as a lifesaver and Kamaru Usman rematch
The greatest achievement of Leon Edwards’ career isn’t making it to a welterweight title fight against champion Kamaru Usman on Saturday in the main event of UFC 278 at Vivint Arena in Salt Lake City. Nor would it be ending Usman’s incredible 19-bout winning streak over nearly nine full years.
No, the greatest accomplishment of Edwards’ life is surviving his childhood in Kingston, Jamaica.
“Not many people who know would have given me a chance of getting out of there alive, let alone winning the most prestigious title in mixed martial arts,” Edwards told Yahoo Sports.
Hardcore boxing fans may know of Kingston as the site where George Foreman dropped heavyweight champion Joe Frazier six times in less than two rounds — “Down goes Frazier!” Howard Cosell bellowed. “Down goes Frazier!” — to win the heavyweight title.
To Edwards, though, it was like a war zone. He heard gunfire daily. He saw shooting victims fleeing in a desperate search for safety. So many people he knew died — often by guns — at young ages.
He moved to England with his mother and brother when he was 9. His father had moved to England years earlier and summoned his family when he saved enough to buy them a home. But the home was in a crime-infested area in Birmingham, England. Better than Kingston? Perhaps, but life was still unimaginably difficult, and dangerous.
His father was murdered when he was 14. Edwards joined a gang, not because he wanted to but because he had no choice.
“That’s all there was,” he said. “It was a difficult time.”
Edwards is now one of the world’s great martial artists, an even-tempered and patient man who has not lost since a defeat to Usman in 2015. Usman has won 13 in a row since that point and Edwards, not to be outdone, has won nine in a row.
It’s all because when he was 17, he and his mother walked past an MMA gym. His mother urged him to join, and she scraped up what she had to pay the monthly dues.
It changed his life.
“That’s fair to say,” Edwards said when asked if MMA saved his life. “Without MMA, I don’t know what would have become of me. It was a difficult, hard, dangerous life.”
But MMA got him away from the dangers of the streets and focused on using his ability to fight in a productive manner.
Edwards is 19-3 overall in MMA and 11-2 in the UFC with a no-contest when an inadvertent eye poke ended his fight with Belal Muhammad early.
He fought Usman in 2015 in just his fourth UFC bout, and Usman’s second. Still he knew immediately after that bout on Dec. 19, 2015, in Orlando, Florida, that he and Usman were destined to meet again.
“I knew he was a good fighter and that we’d meet down the road for a rematch,” Edwards said. “It’s not like I told people, ‘Oh, Kamaru and I are going to fight for the title someday.’ No, that’s not true. But I had a lot of faith in myself and in my ability and I knew he was very good and was probably going to get better, so I figured I’d see him down the line again somewhere.”
Edwards lost that first fight by scores of 29-28 twice and 30-27. He felt then it was a winnable fight and though both are vastly different fighters now, he feels just as confident that he can win the rematch.
Usman is a -375 favorite at BetMGM, while Edwards is +295. But Edwards believes he’s evolved enough that he has what he needs to defeat Usman and become the welterweight champion.
Usman is now being talked about as one of the greatest fighters who ever lived, and he’s ranked No. 1 pound-for-pound.
Edwards said he worried too much what Usman was going to do in the first fight and not enough about what he should have done. This time, that won’t be the case.
And what at first was seen as a negative — Edwards was sidelined for two years because of the pandemic and injuries — he now views as a blessing.
“I’ve worked my ass off to get better and I’m significantly better now than I was,” he said. “And I didn’t take damage like a lot of these guys. I got better each day and I’m still fresh and still at the top of my game.”
And that puts him on the precipice of a title, a title he never even considered during his troubled youth.
“I didn’t grow up dreaming of being the champion or anything like that, because I didn’t know anything about it,” Edwards said. “It was all about survival. If I can do this, though, it would mean the world to mean. It’s such an amazing story. I came from extremely humble beginnings in Jamaica and for most of my life, there was trouble everywhere I turned.
“And now, to be here with an opportunity to have that UFC belt put around my waist in a couple of days, that’s the kind of story they talk about in the movies. It’s amazing.”
