Leon Edwards: Subtlety Revisited
Photo by Brandon Magnus/Zuffa LLC/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images
At 170, subtlety seems to have become something of a lost art. This applies in multiple ways; the characters that fighters play have gotten far more bombastic, but the fights have also gotten a good deal simpler. After the days of Georges Saint-Pierre, a fighter whose approach compounded in brilliant fashion across the entire scope of the sport, the elite of the division seemed to fill with specialists at an alarming pace. In fact, the most dominant champion since GSP feasted on this tendency alone; Tyron Woodley could enforce an unspectacular wrestling game on strikers and an unspectacular striking game on grapplers, with minimal connective tissue or even consistency between them, and yet it worked beautifully for years due to a strong athletic base.
Perhaps this trend is why Leon Edwards has seemed like a bit of a throwback, as a fighter who makes his living on command in every phase. In a field of fighters who weaponize power or pace or aggression, Edwards’ approach does none of that; instead, he’s built a unique and cohesive set of skills, and it has led to most of his opponents looking painfully mediocre next to him. Of course, it’s difficult to gain attention with wins this way, especially when the rest of the field is dynamic to a fault; that said, the results have spoken for themselves, as “Rocky” has amassed a deceptively deep resume at 170 from getting no favors on his way up.
An all-rounder like none other at 170, Leon Edwards can lay credible claim to being a pound-for-pound talent, even as he’s yet to win a belt; for all but a handful of fighters, he has proven as big a problem to fight as he has been to promote.
Southpaw v2
In general, southpaws in MMA tend to follow a similar pattern, which isn’t a surprise since orthodox fighters don’t tend to have a consistent way of dealing with stock southpaw tactics; the open-stance gives the practiced man a few easy targets and the less-practiced man opportunities to overextend on rear-hands and get countered, and the southpaw tends to be the more practiced man. Edwards isn’t an exception, but he is a better example than most of building off that structure and doing it smartly.
Against Vicente Luque, an offensive dynamo of a welterweight whose defense wasn’t quite at that tier, Edwards’ striking game got a good deal of purchase until later in the fight; Luque was known mostly for a terrific left-hook on the counter, and the southpaw Edwards was able to both feint Luque’s responses out and get behind his lead shoulder when Luque managed to time that shot correctly.
Edwards’ offense at this point is the aforementioned southpaw changeup; Edwards’ consistent feinting with his lead hand hid whether his entries were real or not, and the motion of the straight and the rear-kick (squaring the hips, mostly) looked similar enough early to throw his opponent off further. Luque’s stock high-guard left him a decent mark for Edwards’ body kick, and when he threw it to the head, Edwards could try to punch directly off it to take advantage of widening Luque’s guard.
The final goal of this set of complementary attacks is what eventually happened to Pawel Pawlak. Edwards was fairly nascent here, but the double-attack worked anyway; his straight left was quick on the lead and on the counter (as Pawlak worked in big committed flurries), and just as Pawlak committed to parrying it, Edwards’ kick came up around the side. The beauty of it is that the attack also works in reverse; once the head kick lands with that sort of authority, slipping actively or narrowing the guard becomes harder to do confidently, and Edwards’ straight can take advantage of that lag.
Edwards isn’t a particularly dynamic puncher (except to Seth Baczynski), but he’s a fast and accurate one; this leaves the changeup very viable, as Edwards’ opponents can’t afford to wait to see the extension of the arm to start defending, and this leaves the kicking game very much in play.
The other important component to the southpaw double-attacker, though, is something to keep the necessary range of that tactic intact; the key to dealing with kickers is generally to push them back, as there are a single-digit number of comfortable backfoot-kickers in MMA, so it takes the ability to stand ground to make that game work at a certain level. Edwards has that, too; while he isn’t one of those few backfoot-kickers, he’s a strong counterpuncher who can enforce his range well.
Edwards’ counters are built to end or prevent exchanges, to get him back to a range where his advantage is wider; Edwards (at least at this point) isn’t the most comfortable in longer trades, and both his initial-stage counters and his clinch (seen later) keep them from being easily enforceable by his opponent.
Most important is Edwards’ commitment to angling or pivoting off or clinching when he finds his shot, which prevents his opponent from being able to simply eat his counter and keep trying to throw volume; Cerrone’s punch-entries are never anything but linear charges, which makes it easy to appreciate how Edwards is usually leaving the exchange in a different direction than the one in which Cerrone is looking to push him. Even as Cerrone called upon Edwards to brawl in the center, Edwards obliged, but took a sidestep after his counter-combination to break the line of Cerrone’s attack, and ran him into the clinch as he tried again.
The Sobotta fight showed that Edwards wasn’t just a capable counterpuncher, but a smart one; the southpaw Sobotta had some early success jabbing Edwards, but by the end of round 1, Edwards had recognized that Sobotta didn’t have many other answers (especially having been knocked down in the first extended exchange), and worked to take that away. Eventually, Edwards had gained such a strong read on the German’s jab that he could draw it out himself; pushing Sobotta back and leaning over his lead hip to appear closer than he was, drawing out Sobotta’s jab, and slipping it to land a big uppercut.
This sequence shows what Edwards does well insofar as counterpunching, but also shows his understanding of smart outfighting. Edwards’ outside footwork is serviceable, he can be backed up by a more patient and sounder pressurer (as the fight against Rafael dos Anjos showed), but he had some strong responses to Donald Cerrone simply looking to blitz him backwards.
For the first blitz, Edwards hopstepped backwards, keeping a strong stance as he threatened the counter and convinced Cerrone not to keep the committed attack going. Note the small angle at which he retreated, relative to Cerrone’s linear charge; if Cerrone kept it going, Edwards would’ve been at a defined positional advantage, in a strong stance and facing Cerrone (essentially pivoted into him) as Cerrone was squared up in comparison.
Edwards’ responses to Cerrone’s aggression (after the jab/front-kick) built off one another; Edwards simply hopped backwards as Cerrone showed his first entry, and it encouraged Cerrone to leap full force into Edwards’ subsequent rear-hook. Edwards had trained Cerrone to expect a drop-back every time Cerrone shifted forward for his punch-entries, and as Edwards stood his ground to punish the last blitz, it caught Cerrone totally unaware.
Edwards’ entry at the end of the clip saw him flash a straight-left to draw Cerrone’s response (in this case a takedown attempt), but using it to angle out of the exchange, pivoting back into his stance as Cerrone turned to face him. Along with the earlier angular-retreat, this tool of Edwards not only gives him advantages in exchanges, but makes it difficult for an opponent to push him back with just urgency.
Edwards is a range striker at heart, and his enforcement of the other parts of his game is mostly a response to his opponent looking to take his range away; in slower in-the-open fights, Edwards has proven nearly unbeatable, especially as he’s continued to improve (and the fight against dos Anjos showed exactly that). That said, there’s a strong argument for his clinch and top-game to be even more of a competitive edge against the rest of 170.
In Contact
Edwards’ game at range is very good by any standard, but in a division of fighters who can fall back on their wrestling (even if they aren’t primarily wrestlers), this is rarely enough; in fact, Edwards learned this himself in his only legitimate UFC loss, when a nascent Kamaru Usman bested him early in his career with his wrestling. Even just four years into his career, Edwards gave Usman plenty of pushback in the clinch and on the ground; in the four years since that bout, Leon has rounded out his skills in both areas, and his clinch in particular has become perhaps the best in MMA. It was present in the Cerrone fight as well (in fact, Edwards’ clinch gained the notoriety it deserved mostly in that first step up, as Cerrone’s face was cut into ribbons by the end of round 2), but the most impressive and devastating display of Edwards’ clinch to date was likely against Iceland’s Gunnar Nelson.
Two broad things to note on Edwards’ clinch game. The first (and probably less important, all things considered) is a specific position that has become a bit of a home-base for him, and seen repeatedly through the Cerrone and Nelson fights. Edwards’ head-positioning keeps his opponent from collapsing the distance, and the bicep-tie on the far arm keeps them from turning to face him; the overhook keeps them from simply leaving the exchange, and the frame on their hip serves as a lever to move his opponent and as a redundancy to keep distance even if the head-position isn’t there (Nelson looks to hip through it at one point but finds the overall structure of Edwards’ position too sound). This leaves Edwards essentially perpendicular to his man, free to throw knees to his heart’s content, and with full control of when the exchange ends.
That said, Edwards’ home-position isn’t a necessary part of his effectiveness; he can work with short collar ties or underhooks just as well (see the little trip from the over-under to create space to catch a collar-tie and land a knee), and the more crucial part of his clinch game is his uniquely dictatorial control of entries and exits. Edwards is brilliant in terms of entering clinches reactively, and the fairly rote but bursting game of Nelson was a great stage for it; Edwards could slip inside the left-hook or outside the rear-hand fairly easily, and Nelson would already be too committed moving forward to keep Edwards from catching ties in those exchanges.
Edwards’ calling card, though, has become the elbow on the break, and it’s not hard to see how Edwards beating everyone to the punch on that can be a function of his terrific positioning inside + his entries being trickier than anyone else’s. For example, by the time Nelson realized that he was even in the clinch after his rear hand missed, Edwards’ collar tie was already in place to target the knockdown elbow.
In a nutshell. Cerrone feints some kind of entry, his actual intentions aren’t clear, but Leon responds by getting behind his lead shoulder and driving his arm inside Cerrone’s lead hand; if it was a left hook, Edwards would’ve obstructed or ducked it, and it gave him a clean clinch entry. Leon fires three short elbows before framing off, and Cerrone’s attempt to hit on the break falls short as Edwards didn’t cede the initiative for a second.
There are certain philosophical parallels that can be made between Leon Edwards and the greatest welterweight of all time, Georges Saint-Pierre, which are all the clearer because the rest of the welterweight field has mostly lost that subtlety; Edwards’ command of a fight isn’t restricted to being within any given phase, and arguably benefits most from being applied across multiple phases. Consistently giving Edwards trouble at range is something that no opponent has done, but when an opponent looks to collapse the distance, Edwards’ smart and safe clinch entries play a similar role to GSP’s reactive shot; Edwards can quickly regain the initiative and dissuade his opponent from stepping in on him again. The fact that he can beat anyone in the clinch (even on even-ground) means that his edge in dictating the entries and exits becomes even more actionable. Of course, this was clearest in his bout against Rafael dos Anjos, against whom he needed those advantages; against lesser opponents, Edwards could just do as he pleased in tie-ups.
Edwards’ clinch positioning doesn’t just lead to strong striking opportunities, but also provides clean routes to bodylocks if he wants them; to take advantage of that, Edwards has developed one of the better top games at 170. Edwards has only one submission win in the UFC (in a fight he was struggling in, against current ACA champion Albert Tumenov), but his top-game has found success even against grapplers as well-regarded as Gunnar Nelson.
Edwards isn’t the best wrestler at a wrestle-heavy division, but he’s very competent, and much of his brilliance is in his ability to reliably get to those positions; Edwards’ ability to enter clinches reactively (which was seen earlier in a striking context) allowed him to just run RDA to the ground early. However, the first instance shows Edwards having to build off an entry that didn’t work the way he hoped; Edwards couldn’t just blow through Barberena on the reactive double, he switched to a trip that also didn’t work, and so he came up on a bodylock and swung Barberena to be almost perpendicular to him before stepping across for the trip.
In particular, his bout against Peter Sobotta became a clinic in a damaging top-game against an active bottom player; Edwards finished the fight in the final second just by attrition through the third round, beating the German into submission.
Edwards’ top game is mostly geared towards wrestling rides, which works well in terms of freeing up striking opportunities and breaking his opponent down along the fence. From half-guard here, Edwards moves to a cross-wrist ride (a position sometimes called the “Dagestani handcuff” by commentators, due to its use by Khabib Nurmagomedov); to simplify a bit, the leg entanglement complicates Sobotta turning fully to his belly, and the wrist-control makes it hard to turn the other way. It also leaves Edwards a free arm with which to hit, as the wrist-control takes away Sobotta’s ability to post with Edwards’ weight on him.
Sobotta is able to escape the position and turn to his belly, but it leaves Edwards able to take the back; with one hook in, Edwards uses his forearm to break Sobotta’s posture and controls Sobotta’s right arm (stripping the post) as Sobotta looks to get back up. Sobotta commits to covering up as Edwards has still left himself an arm with which to hit, and the referee steps in.
Edwards isn’t a dedicated top-player, and part of that might be that he’s faced fairly stout defensive grapplers in his last three, but he’s certainly one of the better in the division on top; it says a good deal about the depth of his skill elsewhere that a top-game as strong as his is mostly a tool of opportunity.
A Passing Of The Torch
While Edwards’ other fights were legitimately impressive, his step-up into the elite was somehow even moreso; against an opponent who was not only a technician like few others but also specifically hard for the archetype he represented, Edwards passed with flying colors. Rafael dos Anjos was off a win when he faced Edwards, and a very important one; after struggling with Colby Covington and losing wide to Kamaru Usman, dos Anjos proved his viability against athletic pressure-wrestlers in a finish over Kevin Lee. It was a gruelingly physical fight in which RDA thrived, and it was a mere two months before his July bout with “Rocky”; dos Anjos was in championship-form against Leon Edwards, as one of the absolute best all-terrain fighters in the history of MMA, and with the proficiency in every phase to make up for being undersized at 170. In the fight itself, he gave a spirited and gutsy performance, the final one of his career, but Edwards was too much for him; Leon didn’t dominate, but he won, and he won in a way that people don’t tend to defeat the great Brazilian.
The story of the fight in the open was the lead hand of both, used in a capacity that southpaws generally aren’t used to. Southpaw-southpaw fights tend to be very uncomfortable and fairly slow for that reason; the closed-stance makes the rear hand harder to line up past the lead shoulder, which means that the lead hand would need to be used for more than just handfighting.
With Edwards’ massive edge in range, he had a decent advantage on paper with a jabbing match, but dos Anjos’ jab looked excellent in this fight. For the most part, RDA would jab or double-jab in to close distance, dipping as he did to beat Edwards’ counter, and look to keep the exchange going past that. Edwards’ own jab often met with RDA jabbing with him in this way, or landing the counter leg-kick.
For a good deal of the fight, dos Anjos did a nice job nullifying the range differential, creating some gorgeous exchanges in the process (for example, drawing Edwards’ right hook and nearly cross-countering it, moving to a dominant angle that squared Edwards up, and landing his own right hook to end the exchange).
As the fight developed, though, Leon’s jab grew more and more useful, and round 3 featured Edwards boxing up dos Anjos as well as anyone has. Edwards could flash it to keep dos Anjos honest as RDA looked to pressure, and build off it into terrific combinations (for example, drawing dos Anjos’ counter-jab before hooking off his own, ending up with a 3-2 that landed clean). Edwards eventually even found ways to punish the counter leg-kick, backing RDA up to make it harder to get away cleanly from it and lacing him with right hands.
For a fighter whose usual MO during extended exchanges was to look to land a stern shot and leave, the consistent and smart combination work during the RDA fight was extremely impressive.
Before the fight, the clinch was a massive point of interest; RDA and Edwards were arguably the best clinchers in MMA at the time, regardless of weight class. Near the early stages of the fight, dos Anjos did a great job, especially in extended clinch-exchanges; well aware of the danger of the elbow on the break, RDA controlled the arm well or ducked it, and Edwards never got to that one terrific control position he preferred.
However, where Edwards found his edge was in those reactive clinch entries; Edwards’ sternest shots came when he could enter quick and exit quick, finding his clinch entries off slipping or ducking RDA’s offense and coming up with a collar tie. RDA was intermittently aware of them and eventually started doing things like framing off his jab to keep Edwards from grabbing unexpected clinches, but it was too little, too late.
Up until this point, the focus has been on Edwards’ tactical intelligence, but the RDA fight was one where he needed to be strategically smart as well, and that’s exactly what he was. Post-fight, his rationale was that RDA couldn’t come back in a fight that he was losing, and that was a smart way to play it; RDA eventually figured out how to defend Edwards’ counters and keep out of the clinch, mixing it with heavy pressure that kept him in the pocket, but he just didn’t possess the dynamism at 170 to change the fight that late. Edwards knew that, and he fought like it, and by the time he got that final takedown, the fight felt sealed.
Rafael dos Anjos struggled through his career with similar obstacles that Edwards had, especially at welterweight; he had the obvious size issue to contend with, but even beyond that (and even at 155), the Brazilian didn’t have the flash nor the charisma that would’ve allowed the UFC to showcase his immense and broad skill. With Edwards’ win over dos Anjos (and dos Anjos’ subsequent decline), Leon Edwards ascended to the role that dos Anjos had graced, of the workman whose style is far easier to deny than his substance.
Concluding Thoughts
Before some outside circumstances forced the event into cancellation, Edwards’ next fight was meant to be Tyron Woodley; it would be a step-up in name, a former champion at 170, but not necessarily a boost in difficulty. In terms of cohesive threats, Edwards’ last fight was far superior to Woodley; in fact, Woodley’s entire game doubles down on the dynamism of welterweight, to the point of having little else. The shame is that Edwards could be pushed aside again; Colby Covington re-entered the public eye in his attempt to fight Tyron Woodley, and that’s a fight that promises all the loudness and messiness that Leon Edwards lacks.
It isn’t impossible that Edwards simply remains stranded just outside contention for as long as it takes for him to wash out; after all, the division has some decent turnover at this point, and Edwards is young but recent years have shown that the right matchmaking can make even the young age quickly. However, even subtle success can only be ignored for so long, and Edwards has already ground his way to a top-5 ranking; with a title shot on the horizon (as far away as that could be), “Rocky” is one to watch. While every champion is purported to be the best ever, the ones at welterweight the one to snatch the perch of GSP, it’s hard to think of a welterweight more philosophically similar to the great Canadian than Birmingham’s brilliant son.
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