Thinking back to the moment between Rounds 4 and 5, Leon Edwards’ boxing coach, Dave Lovell, has to compose himself, overcome with emotion.
If there was any moment for Lovell to lose hope, it was in that one minute, when the fighter he considered one of his sons wouldn’t look at him, just as he had stopped looking at his opponent, UFC welterweight champion Kamaru Usman, after dropping three straight rounds in UFC 278’s headliner.
Edwards had heard Lovell whisper his round score after every frame. This was a record of a seesaw between champion and challenger as the fight for the title continued. He didn’t want anybody to know his thoughts about the winner; this was his private way of keeping his charges on track.
After Edwards blew three straight rounds, making it 3-1 for the champ, he didn’t care who heard what he had to say.
” Stop feeling sorry for yourself ****** You are what? Lovell shouted.
“I’m not!” Edwards replied.
“Well then, Lovell retorted.
In the dozen or so steps between corner and cage, the coach said a little prayer for Edwards, he said Wednesday on The MMA Hour. They’d come a long way together, and they faced the biggest opportunity of Edwards’ career. Edwards had trained six months for the fight, Lovell said, waiting out one of the many turns of bad luck that plagued his road to the belt. The coach believed he was well prepared.
” I just wanted him out on his shield,” Lovell stated through her tears. “I didn’t want him to go out like a lamb.”
Lovell made a promise to never abuse anyone who trusted him when he decided to train as a boxing coach many years ago. Lovell had seen the worst part of boxing as a fighter, seeing up-and-comers being thrown into mismatches and then sacrificed for the sake of filling a card. If one of his fighters was going south, not doing what he was supposed to be doing, he would let them know.
“I don’t blow smoke up anybody’s ass,” he said. “I just tell my fighters how it is. I have made and lost friends, but that is how it has been.”
Edwards was Edwards’ first coach. Lovell didn’t know what he was in for, but he did accept the offer. Lovell was shocked to learn that UFC videos were being shown at the time by a friend. He was curious about whether MMA fighters could hit their bodies, as Edwards seemed like everyone was head-hunting.
Eventually, he learned to love the arts in mixed martial arts, and he joined the corner of a young fighter from Birmingham via Jamaica. A friendship developed between Edwards and his sons, and then a bond formed that led them to the highest levels of MMA competition.
Lovell realized that something had to be done on Saturday in Salt Lake City, a place Edwards hadn’t known before booking the title fight. He’d never seen Edwards in such a state. Other corners could give all the technical advice they wanted. Edwards needed something more.
“I was certain that this child needed his buttons to be pressed,” Lovell stated. I needed to get him out .”
Of the many videos that surfaced in the wake of Edwards’ spectacular knockout of Usman, one showed Lovell watching a cellphone as head coach Henry Clemenson explained the welterweight champ’s tendency to dip his head to the right in exchanges. The natural counter, the coaches agreed, was a left high kick, thrown at a specific angle.
Lovell apparently pushed the right buttons on Edwards. But that kick didn’t come from nowhere.
” “It wasn’t a fluke,” Lovell stated. “Coach Henry, we had drilled that.”
And now, Edwards is the new UFC welterweight champion, the man to dethrone the pound-for-pound best Usman one fight before breaking Anderson Silva’s consecutive win record — four title defenses shy of George St-Pierre’s title reign.
Lovell is now a worldwide sensation, and the hero of many athletes and fighters around the globe who were moved by his plea for the title fight. His sons helped him set up an Instagram account — not that he knows how to work it well, being of the old-school and just happy to send texts.
It doesn’t take a millennial to understand the impact of Edwards’ win, though. In the Erdington section of Birmingham, a place Lovell said is known for poverty and violence, the paint is still drying on a mural of the newly minted champ.
“On Saturday, we’ll go down and take pictures and let the world see what this kid has done, as a young Black kid from Erdington, a deprived area, this is what you can achieve,” Lovell said. “This now has put him on the stage where the youth are going to look up to this kid and think, ‘I can be like that. Why not? He’s come from where I’ve come from.'”
When the UFC decides pay-per-view locations, it’s rare for a fighter to have much of a say; Las Vegas is the de-facto choice when the promotion wants to cash in. In the case of Edwards Vs. Usman 3, UFC President Dana White stated that he is already looking at venues to host the three-fight series in the U.K.
Lovell, of course, would love to see the trilogy take place at Birmingham’s Aston Villa, a 42,000-seat arena where he said the financial impact of the UFC’s presence will be felt.
He would love to be able to compete at sea level. He attributes Edwards’ lapse not to his mind, but the oxygen in shorter supply at 4,000 feet where Salt Lake City’s Vivint Arena resides. The only person not bothered by the altitude in their dressing room was bantamweight Merab Dvalishvili, a Georgia native known for his Tasmanian energy levels. All others were struggling.
“That to me now is the factor,” Lovell stated.
“We all knew he was on point, so to see him start gassing like that, at first, I couldn’t work it out.”
Wherever they go, however, Lovell will be in Edwards’ corner, calling it like he sees it, ready to dispense the advice that pushes the right buttons. The champ will need to defend his belt as things get even more chaotic.
