Issue 200

December 2023

Leon Edwards' stunning knockout victory over Kamaru Usman at UFC 278 will live long in the memory. But the contest also provided some of the most iconic corner work in UFC history, with Edwards’ coach Dave Lovell delivering a masterful performance between rounds. Coach Lovell sat down for a chat with Jake Smith to look back at that remarkable night in Utah.

Dateline: Salt Lake City, Utah, Saturday, August 20, 2022. Leon Edwards has just realized his dream and is crowned the undisputed UFC welterweight champion in a comeback classic, after delivering a fifth-round head-kick knockout of defending champion Kamaru Usman at UFC 278.

The rematch was seven years in the making, with Usman having got the better of the two back in 2015. Since then, it seemed written in the stars that the two talents would collide again, in a much bigger fight than the first.

As Lovell explained, Edwards’ team were keen to keep spirits high, while simultaneously treating the warm-up as they would any other, carefully ensuring there was no added pressure on Leon.

“We’ve got a little routine we keep to,” Lovell told Fighters Only as he looked back at that night.

“Leon doesn’t like the razzamatazz and all the rest of it. He likes to just chill, keep it real, break down the fight. You know? More of a family feel rather than a ‘we're going to war’ kind of thing.

“We know what we've got to do. Everything we're prepared to put in leading up to the fight.”

You’d be forgiven for thinking that the seconds before a fighter makes the walk to the cage for their first ever title fight, nerves would be at an all-time high. But that wasn’t the case for the Edwards team. As a man who personifies coolness, ‘Rocky’ didn’t need any special treatment in the minutes leading up to his walkout. 

“Leon is a calm, cool character anyway,” Lovell explained.

“He’s not one to let the occasion overwhelm him. He's very calm, cool, and calculated. I've said my little words, we've got little things that we do as coaches to make that little link leading up to the walkout, a little procedure that we go through.

“It was no different from any other fight, we knew what the task was. We just reminded him about it several times.”

Edwards etched his name in the history books in the opening stanza, as he became the first man to successfully take Usman down in a UFC bout. Once he had the bout on the floor, he displayed his tremendous ground game, and came close to finishing the fight with a rear-naked choke. As Lovell explained, as great as the opening round was, things soon started going downhill.

“Round 1, when he came out well, this is it, this is what we trained for. You’re on it. We were just looking to get there, repeat it, hoping to get stronger and better, but it reversed,” he recalled.

“He started to get worse, and started to get weaker. So this is where coaches are worth their salt. You’ve got to know your fighter, what frame of mind he’s in.”

Usman found his feet in Round 2 and was back to his classic wrestle-heavy style as he forced the action up against the fence and mixed in some solid shot selection with Edwards having little to no answer to the champion’s oncoming attacks. Lovell admitted that, in between Rounds 2 and 3, he was bemused about how the momentum had swung so far in Usman’s favour.

“You don’t want to know (what I was thinking)!” he laughed.

“I’m thinking, ‘What the hell is going on?’ After the years of work he's put in, obviously the dedication of all the ups and downs during COVID, Belal, the eye poke, even with the Diaz fight, getting caught in the last 30 seconds of the last round. This kid has gone through a lot of adversity to reach this point. For me seeing it, round by round, slipping away from him, I was frustrated and if I could’ve actually got in there to fight the fight for him, I would have.”

Lovell pleaded with Edwards ‘Don’t let him bully you, Leon! Don’t let him bully you, son!’ But unfortunately for all involved with the Team Renegade man, Round 3 picked up where Round 2 left off. Usman was seemingly finding takedown entries at will, and took the round comfortably.

A dejected-looking Edwards headed back to his corner and Lovell knew exactly what he needed to do. The tone of his corner advice became much more animated. This is a tactic that may not work with every athlete, but having worked closely with Edwards for so long, Lovell felt this was the right way to go.

“I know his mental state and he's a bit laid back in some aspects,” he explained.

“I'm not saying he was laid back in that fight, but it was like it just couldn't click, and he just needed that push to click. I just thought I had to at least go out there and put it on the table (and hope he would) respond to what I was saying. Whether he did was another thing – and fortunately he did – but round by round, I was getting more frustrated. 

“I didn't want to show my frustration in the sense of ‘Come on, Leon!’ I had to let him know how I was feeling. I had to just tell him as it is – real. And that's what me and Leon have got between coach and fighter. I am real with my fighters.”

‘Rocky’ found himself on the wrong end of another rough five minutes in Round 4. Usman appeared to be as fresh as he was in the opening round, and was commanding the bout, landing some heavy strikes as the penultimate round drew to a close. At this point, former two-division UFC champion Daniel Cormier, who was calling the fight as a color commentator, had started to question the fighting spirit of the Birmingham man. Edwards cut an unhappy figure as he trudged back to the corner ahead of of the final round. Having worked with Leon for over a decade, Lovell knew what he had to do. He read the riot act to his athlete.

“It was heart-wrenching for me because, like I say, I want this kid to go out on his shield. So I had to do what I thought I had to do,” Lovell said.

“Like I said, I went back to the corner, had a little prayer to myself. It must have been answered because he went out and he pulled it all out of the fire, because that's what you have to do.

“That was his last (round), but this was his last hurrah of becoming the world champion, putting all that work and all that effort, all the heartache, all the tears that we've been through for the last two, three, four years to reach this point. So all that emotion was building up inside me. So I just let that emotion just naturally take place through that speech.

“It just came from the heart, and it was real.”

What happened in Round 5 will live long in the memory. Edwards unleashed a kick that was heard around the world. As UFC co-commentators Joe Rogan and Daniel Cormier discussed how Edwards may have resigned himself to defeat, play-by-play man Jon Anik delivered the now immortal line, “…but that is not the cloth from which he is cut.”

A mere heartbeat after those words left Anik’s mouth, Edwards produced a ‘Rocky’ moment every bit as dramatic as those in his movie namesake’s boxing career. A head-kick connected clean and sent the champion crashing to the mat. The MMA world exploded. Edwards had just knocked out one of the pound-for-pound greats in the most dramatic way imaginable. Reliving the moment, Lovell finds it almost indescribable.

“You can’t imagine. So it was such a great feeling for me,” he recalled.

“Emotionally, it took me over at that time, but to see this kid achieve these goals, it just made me feel on top of the world. I've been in the fight game a long time, but that has got to have topped the greatest feeling in my fight history. You know, lifting him up at that moment, seeing that this kid had won the UFC world title and had become the UFC world champion was just… wow! It was something else.”

In the following days, footage captured by TNT Sports during Edwards' fight camp showed Lovell studying tape on Usman and ultimately seeing the head kick as a road to victory. He discussed the reasoning behind believing the head kick could be one of the keys to success.

“I’d been studying in depth. With any fighter, if you watch them long enough, you'll see their little trademark, their little traits, what they do. And that was one of Usman’s little traits, he fell in love with his hands a little bit, because recently in his last three, maybe four, fights he finished them with stand up, mainly.

“And I think he tried to fall in love with his hands a little bit too much. And in MMA, when you parry, it cannot be a big parry and dip your head off the line. You've got to parry with your head on the line that you can block anything, any counter shots or kicks that are coming.

“That's where he made the crucial mistake, and he paid the ultimate penalty for it.

“That head kick, we drilled it even when we were in Utah and we went to the gyms leading up to the fight. That was just one of the few things we drilled and it just so happened that, that specific move was the one that pulled it out the fire for him.”

What a journey it has been for the pair, from spotting a young Leon hitting pads whilst taking a hobbyist class.

“We're still the same. We're very close. Yeah, we got the same relationship. We still, you know, it runs a little bit deeper than just trainer-fighter, because he's grown among my sons as well and they are all tight, but of the youth climate. 

“I look at them (Leon and Fabian Edwards) technically as sons. So what happens to them affects me.”

That journey didn't stop at UFC 278, however. Lovell took Edwards' brother Fabian to a Bellator middleweight title shot, though "The Assassin" lost out to a world-class talent in champion Johnny Eblen. And there was one final chapter to write in Leon's rivalry with Usman, as the pair met for a third time at UFC 286 in London, with Edwards showing just how well-rounded a fighter he had become as he ran out the decision winner to retain his title on UK soil.

After the decision was read, Edwards was hoisted up into the air by Lovell, the man who had been with him on every step of his journey.