Leon Edwards First Title Defence May Not Be Who You Expect.

Leon Edwards knocked out Kamaru Usman in August, at UFC 278 late in round 5.

Kamaru was heavily in control the entire fight, until 4:04 into the 5th round when Edwards shocked the world and landed a flush left high kick to the dome of Usman, knocking him cold.

Since Leon’s title win he’s been fairly busy with English media tour and training, Kamaru on the other hand, hasn’t said too much about what’s next.

Kamaru made a appearance at a indy MMA promotion, and it looked like there was a cast on his arm he’s had previous surgery on witch sparked a lot of rumours that he won’t be ready for the England card for this year.

If this is true and Usman is not ready, who do they send over for Edwards to fight?

Well there’s a few different names they could do, but I’ll give 2 that make the most sense, The first is the obvious one Jorge Masvidal. Not putting him in there from what he’s done in the UFC the last 2 years, he’s 0-3, and 2-3 since being sent to stardom from his record setting KO on Ben Askren, but skill is not what’s getting Jorge to his 3rd title shot, it’s the “three piece and soda” that Jorge gave to Leon backstage in 2019 in England, after KO’ing Darren Till.

The other option is Khamzat Chimaev who’s currently sitting at number 3 in the welterweight rankings, Khamzat is an absolute killer, but he lacks respect to the sport, Khamzat’s last fight he missed weight by 8 pounds, calling off his first headline main event, getting replaced by Tony Fergusson, setting Khamzat up against much lower ranked Kevin Holland. There were rumblings this week that Khamzat would replace Geoff Neil after he pulled out of the first UFC fight night of 2023 against Shavkat Rakhmonov who’s also a very dominant Welterweight.

Nothing came to fruition for Khamzat and Neil vs Rakhmonov was later rescheduled for UFC 285 in Vegas in march.

In a dream world we have Edwards vs. Usman as the England headliner, but I think we’re getting Edwards vs. Masvidal and get that grudge match out the way