Boom goes the dynamite! With one swift and perfectly placed kick, Leon Edwards dethroned the pound for pound king in Kamaru Usman at the last minute of UFC 278. After being dominated for the majority of the fight, it looked like Edwards was down and out and we all pretty much counted him out. But he persevered and overcame the odds. So in our usual Sunday fashion, we will break the fight down. Lets get to our latest episode of Aftermath!
Kamaru Usman Was Almost Perfect At UFC 278
Kamaru Usman fought an almost perfect fight at UFC 278. But like I always tell my son, "Almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades." In a sport with such dire consequences such as mixed martial arts one small slip up will cost you everything. An ill-timed allowance of space for Glover Teixeira and Jiri Prochazka choked him out to take the belt. Biting on the feint and Alex Pereira takes Sean Strickland's title shot away. Lowering your guard and eating the high kick and Kamaru Usman loses his title, pound for pound ranking and 15 fight win streak. And Usman really did look good. In the past I've criticized him for being boringly effective and praised him for what improvements he's made in his striking.
At UFC 278, he mixed it all together and did it well. Aside from the first round where he was taken down for the first time in his career and the last three seconds of the fight, Usman looked great.Usman walked down Edwards for the middle portion of the fight, pressured him to the fence, and shot the takedown. He often got the takedown too. He didn't land as much damage as one would hope, but overall, I believe that the Usman we saw in rounds two through four were the best version of him that we've seen. Unfortunately, he made the single mistake at the end of the fight with a minute to go. He bit on the feint that was cleverly set up by Edwards and ate the high kick.
Often times when a long reigning champion loses, we see a drop off in the level of fight. With Usman that could be the case but I would still favor him in the rematch despite being caught. For the most part, he won that fight. But he didn't and now he's the number one contender once again.
Leon Edwards: The New Welterweight King
Leon Edwards is the UFC welterweight champion of the world. A bit odd of a sentence to write after Kamaru Usman has held the belt since March of 2019. But it is the reality that he and the rest of us now live in. On Tuesday we will have a rankings update and Leon Edwards will be atop of the welterweight division and Alexander Volkanovski will be the king of the pound for pound list, as he should be.
In this week's Beforemath, I talked about how Usman has talked about having problems with the knees in the past and that Edwards should target the kick to the knee. A lot of the things in that post worked out to exactly how we predicted. Usman took advantage of the southpaw stance and picked up a couple takedowns off the single leg. Edwards attacked the leg early on. But after the end of the first round, those leg kicks were largely forgotten by Edwards. Ever since he lost to Usman in 2015, Edwards has worked on his clinch and trips from the clinch. He's also become a good clinch fighter by association with all the training and it made him a deadly fighter there. But with Usman's strength, he had trouble finding those elbows.
Edwards did get a slick trip in round one, as we mentioned earlier, and spent the entirety of the fist round in control of Usman showing us a weakness of the former champion: he's no good off his back.
Edwards went on to do absolutely nothing the rest of the fight sans the head kick. He let Usman walk him down, didn't use his footwork, and did almost no damage. Edwards was taken down five times but did a good job for the most part getting back up. He let Usman hurt him and it truly looked like he was defeated. But in the waning seconds of the fifth round, Edwards was looking mentally defeated. He threw a half hearted (by design) 1-2 and launched the left high kick that landed flush on Kamaru Usman.
Like we saw last week with Dominick Cruz being put away by Chito Vera, Edwards landed the kick that put down the traditionally durable Kamaru Usman. Edwards had become the champ and brought the belt back home to the United Kingdom.
Now we are in a new era. We are in the Leon Edwards era. There's a rematch likely to happen but make no mistake about it, getting the belt from Edwards will have to be done in his back yard. Just as welterweight was getting stale, now there are tons of matchups that need to be made: Usman 3, Colby Covington, Jorge Masivdal, Gilbert Burns, and of course, Khamzat Chimaev. Leon Edwards has made welterweight great again.