August 20th, 2022, Salt Lake City, Utah. Leon Edwards realises his dream and is crowned the UFC Welterweight Champion in a comeback classic, delivering a 5th round head kick knockout over Kamaru Usman at UFC 278.
Not only will the bout stay at the forefront of fans’ minds for years to come for the method of victory, but the contest also provided some of the most iconic cornering in UFC history, with Edwards’ coach Dave Lovell delivering a masterful performance.
The rematch was 7 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, whilst 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. Leon doesn’t like the razzmatazz 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 you know we're going to war kind of thing.
“We know what we've got to do. Everything we're prepared to put in, you know, leading up to the fight.”
You’d be forgiven for thinking that the seconds before he made the walk to the cage in his first ever UFC title fight, nerves would be at an all time high; 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 the walkout.
“Leon is a calm, cool character anyway. 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 a little things that we do as coaches to make that little link leading up to the walk out, 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, becoming the first man to successfully take down Usman in a UFC bout. Once Rocky had it on the floor, he displayed his tremendous ground game, coming close to finishing the fight with a rear naked choke. As Lovell reflected, as great as the opening round was, things soon started going downhill.
“Yeah, well round one 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 reversed. He started to get worse and started to get weaker. So this is where coaches earn 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, wrestling heavy style up against the fence, mixed in with a solid shot selection with Edwards having little to no answers as to preventing the oncoming attacks. Lovell admits that in between rounds two and three, he was bemused as to how the momentum had swung so far into Usman’s favour.
“You don’t want to know (what I was thinking)! I'm thinking what the hell is going on? After the years of work he's put in, obviously the dedication, all the ups and downs during the COVID, you know 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 Renegade man, round three very much picked up where round two left off. Usman was seemingly finding take down entries at will & took the round comfortably.
A dejected looking Edwards headed back to his corner and Lovell knew exactly what he needed to do. With the tone of his corner advice becoming more animated. This is a tactic that may not work with every athlete but having been around each other for so long, Lovell felt this was the right way to go about proceedings. He said:
“I know his mental state and he's a bit laid back in some aspects, 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, you know, put it on the table to 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 5 minute affair in the fourth round. Usman appeared to be as fresh as he was in the first and was commanding the bout, landing some heavy strikes as the round drew to a close. At this point, Daniel Cormier had started questioning the heart of the Birmingham man. An unhappy figure, in the shape of Leon Edwards, trundled their way back into the corner. Having worked with Leon for over a decade, Lovell felt now was the time to 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. 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 but this was his last hurrah of being 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, 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.”
Round 5, a kick that was heard around the world. Seconds after Jon Anik coined, the now famous, ‘but is not the cloth from which he is cut’ following Joe Rogan & Daniel Cormier suggesting Edwards may have given up, ‘Rocky’ found a moment that would not go amiss in his namesakes movie franchise and fired a kick to the head of Usman which sent the then champion crashing to the mat. Reliving the moment, Lovell finds it almost indescribable.
“You can’t imagine. So it was such a great feeling for me. 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. That for me, 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' 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 more 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 you know yourself 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, 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 in a local gym, to reaching the pinnacle of the sport.
“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 amongst my sons as well and they all tight.
“I look at them (Leon and Fabian Edwards) technically as sons. So what happens to them affects me.”
Following a successful title defence in their trilogy bout & in front of a UK crowd, Leon then went on to defend his belt once again, in dominating fashion, against Colby Covington at UFC 296.
