It felt like a scene out of a movie. Heading into the final round, his coach could be heard on the broadcast yelling at Leon Edwards to “stop feeling f****** sorry for himself” and “pull this s*** out of the fire.” Edwards, at that point losing the fight three rounds to one, managed to knock Kamaru Usman, the no.1 ranked pound-for-pound fighter in the world, out cold with under a minute to go. On The MMA Hour, Edwards credited his coach’s motivation for the comeback victory.
“It’s been like that before but not that intense. It’s been like that before in training and other stuff.
Edwards Credits Coaches For Comeback: “They knew how to press my buttons”
I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself. I was feeling — it’s hard to explain it. I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself, I was thinking, ‘There’s no way this is playing out like this.’
I think he could tell by my face, based on what he said. ‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Keep trying, mate. You more than deserve to be here. You can beat this guy. You can do it, so just go out there and do it.’ So that’s what I did.
That’s one of my worst performances ever in my career. To have my worst performance in the biggest moment of my life, it’s hard to explain how you feel mentally. It’s like what the f***. Come on.
How is this playing out like this?
It was difficult to go through, but it is what it is. That was Usman’s best performance, that was my worst performance, and he still couldn’t finish me. I finished him on my worst day.”
Edwards described the moment as “hard to put into words”. “Everyone keeps asking me, ‘How does it feel?’ but it’s hard to put into words.
I think that’s why in my post-fight interview I was just crying, because it’s hard to — not just the moment of winning the UFC world championship, but getting to that point or achieving my dream, going through all the ups and downs throughout life and throughout my career. It’s still difficult to put into words. It still feels so surreal. It doesn’t feel real sometimes.
When you watch movies and you see people cry from happiness, I’ve never cried from happiness before in my life. So when I’m crying from happiness, that’s when you know it was real. It was such a surreal moment, and one that I will treasure forever. To think I didn’t know where Utah was, and now it’s stuck in my life forever. It’s an amazing story.”
What did you make of Leon Edwards’ real-life Rocky moment? Let us know in the comments.
