UFC 286: Leon Edwards vs. Kamaru Usman III Head-to-Toe Breakdown
Leon Edwards scored arguably the biggest upset of 2022 when he turned the lights out on Kamaru Usman with a head kick in the final minute of their five-round fight.
The victory, which headlined the UFC 278 card in Salt Lake City, was as dramatic as they come. Not only was Usman the long-reigning UFC welterweight champion and MMA's consensus pound-for-pound king, but he had previously beaten Edwards with a lopsided unanimous decision, and with three of four rounds in the bag, looked like he was about to do it again.
But the kick changed everything—not just in terms of the fight, but in terms of Edwards' career. Just like that, an unheralded and underappreciated contender was a world champion.
In the main event of this Saturday's UFC 286 card, Edwards will attempt to prove that his stunning knockout of Usman was not, contrary to widespread opinion, a fluke. Usman, meanwhile, will be looking to reassert himself among MMA's pound-for-pound kings.
And while their most recent fight occurred on Usman's home turf in Salt Lake City, the rematch will occur in London, not far from Edwards' home in Birmingham.
It has been one of the most anticipated fights on the calendar since Edwards' shin made contact with Usman's head, and one that has fans divided.
Keep scrolling to see how the two welterweight stars match up and for our best guess as to who leaves London with the belt this Saturday.
Striking
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For the bulk of his UFC career, Kamaru Usman was a grinding wrestler, who outside of a knockout win over Sérgio Moraes, had never given his opponents much reason to worry about his skills on the feet. That changed over the course of his five-fight reign as the UFC welterweight champion, during which time he stopped Colby Covington, Gilbert Burns and Jorge Masvidal with his striking. His win over Masvidal—actually his second after a suffocating decision triumph in 2020—was particularly violent, and it earned him a ton of respect as a striker.
Despite that, Edwards is still the better fighter on the feet, and that's not really surprising. While Usman got his start in combat sports as a wrestler and had to learn to kick and punch from there, the Brit's first combat sport was MMA. Like most fighters from the United Kingdom, where college wrestling isn't as prominent, he's always favored striking over grappling.
The numbers, interestingly, do not reflect this. Usman has the better knockout rate (45 percent to 37). He also lands substantially more significant strikes per minute (4.55 to 2.59), and hits his target at a slightly better rate (53 to 50).
Yet all this really indicates that the two fighters have different approaches to striking. Usman uses his striking to overwhelm his foes and as a means of blinding them to his takedown attempts. Edwards is more of a trap-setter who hangs back to get reads on his foe rather than throwing with abandon.
This was perfectly exemplified by their second fight.
Edwards threw quite a bit less than Usman, but by the waning moments of the fifth-round, when he was down on the scorecards and less than a minute away from a decision loss, he knew that the Nigerian-American had a bad habit of ducking slightly to avoid strikes and how that habit could be countered. Then came the kick.
It was a brilliant display of strategy under pressure, and an excellent reminder of the fact that, in the striking phases of MMA—and in sports like kickboxing and Muay Thai—less is sometimes more.
Edge: Edwards
Submissions
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Neither Edwards nor Usman is known for their submissions. Edwards has scored just 16 percent of his wins by submission, while Usman has finished even fewer of his fights by submission (5 percent).
However, both Edwards and Usman are Brazilian jiu jitsu black belts, under Thomas Bracher and Jorge Santiago respectively, and would presumably win more fights by submission were they not so good at other things, like striking and wrestling.
The fact that we see so little of either man's submission game makes it difficult to say who is better in this phase of the sport. However, it's hard not to give a slight advantage to Edwards, not only because he won a few more fights with his jiu jitsu, but also because he attacks slightly more submissions per 15 minutes (on average) than his foe—0.4 to 0.1.
Edwards was also fairly close to locking up a rear-naked choke in the opening round of his second fight with Usman. That should give him some confidence in their third fight, even if he's spent the bulk of his time in the cage with the Nigerian-American getting outwrestled.
Edge: Edwards
Wrestling
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Edwards and Usman are pretty evenly matched on the feet and in terms of submission. When it comes to the wrestling, however, that is not the case. Usman is much better.
The evidence to support that claim is readily available. While Usman faced some adversity in the first round of his latest fight with Edwards and was ultimately knocked out in the final minute, he spent more than 10 minutes of that fight dragging his British foe through hell on the mat.
Usman also used his wrestling to win his first fight with Edwards—racking up 10-plus minutes of control time—though that fight was long enough ago that it doesn't bear much mentioning ahead of the third installment of the trilogy.
None of that is surprising given Usman's impressive accomplishments as a collegiate wrestler, and his wrestling dominance is as apparent in the stats as it is on tape.
He lands an average of 3.01 takedowns per 15 minutes in the Octagon, whereas Edwards lands just 1.39. Usman also has truly legendary takedown defense. While he was taken down in the first round of his 2022 fight with Edwards, that was actually the first time it had ever happened in the Octagon, and there's no reason to believe it will happen any more frequently this weekend or in his future fights.
He is a very difficult fighter to take down, and on the flip side, can get nearly anybody to the mat if he so desires.
Edge: Usman
X-Factors
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Edwards' X-Factor: Pressure
There is a lot of pressure on Leon Edwards heading into this fight. While he ultimately got the result he wanted in his last meeting with Usman, many fans—and the oddsmakers—doubt he will be able to pull it off again.
Edwards will need to drown out all of that noise in his trilogy fight with Usman, which, as we have already discussed, will occur on UK soil, where everyone in the building will be rooting for him.
Long story short: he has a ton of people to prove wrong, and a country's worth of fight fans who he'll want to avoid disappointing. That's a lot to deal with, particularly when the man across the cage is one of the greatest fighters of all time.
Usman's X-Factors: Durability and Confidence
A bad knockout loss can change a lot for a fighter, even a fighter as prodigiously talented as Kamaru Usman. And the former champ's 2022 knockout loss to Edwards was bad.
The primary concern as he looks to avoid a similar fate in this trilogy fight will be his durability. It's common knowledge that fighters tend to become less durable the more damage they take, and we're bound to learn a lot about Usman's ability to take punishment within the first few clean strikes that Edwards lands.
Confidence will also be a concern for Usman. He now knows that he can be knocked out, even when things are going swimmingly in the Octagon. That knowledge can sometimes haunt a fighter, and you do not want to be distracted by those kinds of ghosts when you've got a sniper like Edwards trying to take your head off.
Prediction
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When attempting to predict the outcome of Leon Edwards and Kamaru Usman's imminent trilogy, it's difficult not to fixate on the kick that the former used to win their second fight. That is the moment we will all still remember five, 10, even 20 years down the line, and many people seem to think the rematch will boil down to whether Edwards can do it again.
Yet we mustn't forget the first round of the pair's second fight. Edwards won that round. Not only that, but he became the first man to take Usman down in the Octagon and came reasonably close to locking up a rear-naked choke.
That round proved Edwards is actually capable of out-fighting Usman on the mat, which given their respective skill sets, is arguably more impressive than the fact that the Brit ultimately won the fight by KO.
Usman can definitely win this fight with his wrestling. He did it the first time, and he almost did it the second time. But it's hard to shake the feeling Edwards was getting close to figuring the former champion out completely in their last fight, and that some seven months later, he'll have an even better sense of how to solve the Usman puzzle.
Throw in the fact that Usman may be a little less durable and a little more gun-shy, and we've got every ingredient for another upset in the pantry.
Prediction: Edwards by unanimous decision
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