Leon Edwards got his ass handed to him at the UFC 304 by Belal Muhammad after the fight ended with a unanimous decision.
Muhammad didn’t give his opponent any leeway and continued to fire deadly shots. He scored nine takedowns, which left Edwards tired and frustrated, and he soon lost his striking energy. The result was Muhammad defeating ‘Rocky’ to win the welterweight belt. Former champion Kamaru Usman had a lot of insight to share about the fight in a recent episode of the ‘Pound 4 Pound’ podcast:
“Now, I fought Leon three times. I would say for a majority of all those fights, Leon put his back up against the cage. Well, he didn’t put his back there. I put him there up against the cage. You pressure him, you pressure him, you pressure him, you take away his space, and Leon just doesn’t necessarily know how to fight there when you take away his space. He wants to create the space, so he backs up. And when he backs up, next thing you know, he puts himself up against the cage.
Usman broke down the fight strategy and what Muhammad did differently from his previous fights with Edwards:
“Now, when you fight a guy like myself and a guy like Belal Muhammad that can change levels on you. Hey, this is what you’re going to get. We’re going to change levels, we’re going to wrap our arms around your legs, and we’re going to take you down every time, and that’s what I did in almost every one of my fight. But Leon, over the time, got smart enough to know. ‘Hey, I can use the cage to my advantage to stand up or to keep myself upright and make it harder for people to keep me down.’ And that’s what he was doing.”
“But, it’s almost like he counters what I do which is put him up against the fence and take him down by using the fence to stand back up and stay upright but then here comes the counter. The counter-counter shall I say, in Belal Muhammad in understanding that, ‘Hey, he uses the fence very well to stand back up. So, when he does stand back up, you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to change levels back again and I’m going to dump him either on his head or I’m going to dump him on his back again,’ and this was textbook.”
