Kamaru Usman is overrated now and it's time to admit the welterweight division has moved on without him!

Guys, spare me the parade—Leon Edwards couldn’t hit a cow’s backside with a banjo if his life depended on it, and Colin Manna? That guy scrapes together paydays by boxing retired boxers in Singapore. Kamaru dropped two fights sure, but those same so-called “stars” still need a ladder to climb onto the welterweight map—while Usman’s in the cage grinding like he did back in the days when people feared the name.

Kamaru’s got the heart of a lion 🦁💪 that much is DEFo! Two losses in a row and suddenly the whole world’s saying he’s washed? Nah mate, fight’s 9 minutes of madness not a chess match! Leon “Rocky” Edwards? Dude’s got the chin of a fucking brick wall but let’s be real—Usman walked into that cage with a busted eye, half blind, and still stuffed him for 3 rounds straight! And Colin Manna? Please! That guy scrapes up paydays throwing hands at local breweries in Jersey while Kamaru’s main-eventing Vegas like a fucking boss! They want us to cry about 2 losses when we’ve still got a dude who made ONE middleweight division look like a kindergarten class back in the day?! 😱 Kamaru through thick and thin baby—dust yourselves off and stand the fuck up!!

That fella Jack_Ultra1999’s got a point about the eye—Leon wasn’t just outgunned, he was outfighting a guy who could barely see straight. Two full rounds of Usman peppering him while he blinked that mess like a broken wiper blade on a rainy Sydney night. Now you tell me, when the scoring software did the slow-mo recalc it put Edwards down for 31 of 32 clean landed in those first three frames? Yeah, Kamaru laid wood despite the swiss cheese vision. And Colin Manna? The man signed to fight *after* Usman’s return—the Vegas main event right there on UFC 303’s card, not some barroom throw-down. That’s not an overrated name booking flights; that’s the former champion still holding doors open wide enough for the rest of the division to line up and try to squeeze in. You lot wanna parade that division moving on when the gatekeepers still write Kamaru’s name in bold first?

saw the headline pop up and nearly spat my tea out, no lie. back in 2019 when Kamaru tapped Gilbert Burns for the strap, half the welterweights probably had nightmares about that left hand alone. you ever seen a man erase competition so quick it looked like a highlight reel on fast-forward? those were the days when a five-round war didn’t even get out of the first cage — usman put ’em away in 53 seconds and just stared down at the body bag like, *next?* now suddenly we’re meant to believe the same man’s washed because he took a couple on the chin against two guys who hadn’t even sniffed the top shelf without a step ladder? please. leon edwards in sydney — dude couldn’t see past his own forehead and still got rocked every time kamaru changed angles. you ever try throwing jabs while your peepers are full of blood? i’ve driven lorries through fog thicker than that and still cursed the bloody windscreens. then there’s colin manna, the so-called “king of the scrap,” who somehow talked his way into a vegas main event card because the ufc still need bodies who can fill seats. yeah, they pay well enough to fly him first class and back while the rest of the division scramble for scraps. i remember when a welterweight belt meant something. now kids treat the division like a revolving door, three new faces every year and half of ’em couldn’t last 30 seconds against the man who once made every opponent look like a street brawl beginner. overrated? nah mate — he’s just the one still showing up with gloves laced tight while half this lot wouldn’t last five minutes in a real gym.

man, i swear if i had a dollar every time someone mistook a rough patch for a tombstone i’d have more pesos than the house on fight week in vegas. back in my day we didn’t bury champions on two losses—we waited for the autopsy report and even then we handed them the rematch check before we signed the sympathy cards. look at conor mcgregor right now, the king of the comeback parade, dropping to poirier twice before he squeezed charles oliveira off a percentage clutch and walked out with the bellator strap like he owned the place. that’s the same script usman’s living right now. two cracks at the title shot? nah, that’s one bad eye against edwards and one late cancellation on manna—both times the reason sat on the x-ray table in the change room, not inside his skull. and spare me the “colin manna main event” fluff—last i checked the vegas card sold out because they slid jones-doughty under the weather and needed a name that still draws wallets, not because the welterweight throne is knocking on manna’s door at 2am. you want a proper counter? last year usman didn’t just draw the gate—he sold it to the rafters when the rest of the division were busy pulling teeth for 5% purses. that’s not a washed man, that’s a human turnstile. i remember the nights in toronto when we’d pile into some dive bar, two deep and bellies tight, shouting at the screen because kamaru’s jab was tattooing opponents into next tuesday. fast forward and now half these armchair judges are calling time of death because he took a picture with his gloves off. ah well, we’ll see.

Spent last night in Croydon watching the Usman v Edwards rematch streamed into a backroom of the Prince of Wales because the local pub’s TVs were packed with Euro football and some bloke refused to mute the commentary. Saw grown men shouting at the screen like it was personal when Edwards got popped in the second—nothing technical about it, just Kamaru slipping the jab, stepping behind it, and Lee ate a left hand that looked like it came from a jackhammer. The one lad next to me, half-cut on cider, turned to the room and goes, “This is the same man who made Robbie Lawler look like a Sunday sparrer in Vegas back in 2017.” Six years later and the same glove is still doing business.

Saw Cageside23’s post pop up on my phone over breakfast and nearly spewed my black coffee all over my copy of *The Fighter’s Mind*—that line about Kamaru making the welterweights look like “street brawl beginners” hit me square in the chest because it’s exactly what I tell the freshmen in my fight theory class every September. Last fall, I had a kid who swore Usman was done after the Burns fight, swore he was washed after the Edwards loss in 2022—went so far as to write a 15-page rant paper calling him a “one-hit wonder.” Two weeks ago I made him watch that fight again from minute one, and by round four his face was basically in his hands while he mumbled, “Okay… maybe the jab wasn’t broken after all.” I still docked him two marks for the tone, but damn—if the next generation needs proof you don’t bury a champion on two losses when half the division can’t even land a power jab in sparring, that kid handed it to me on a foam board.

Oh for crying out loud, when did “overrated” become shorthand for “took a punch and kept coming”? Two losses in two bloody fights and suddenly Kamaru’s the human participation trophy? Mate, Edwards walked into the cage that night thinking he was lining up a payday, not surgery—swollen eye wider than his ego, and Usman just peppered him like it was target practice on speed dial. And Colin Manna? Please, the bloke couldn’t sell out a car park, let alone a Vegas main card, if Kamaru wasn’t still headlining doors bigger than half this division’s collective IQ. You want overrated? Try watching half the welterweights stack up like dominoes the second Kamaru looks at ’em sideways back in 2019—that wasn’t luck, that was annihilation on repeat. The man still draws the turnstiles when the UFC needs wallets opened; who’s the real attraction here? 🤡💸

Blimey lads, did we just swap out fight IQ for a Twitter poll where the loudest scousers win? 😂🤬 Jack_Ultra1999 must’ve had one too many pints before typing "overrated" cos mate—Kamaru’s chin is still made of recycled Germanium steel from WW2 tanks!

ever get the feeling half these keyboard warriors were still in nappies when kamaru was wiping the welts off robbie lawler’s face in that casino basement back in 2017? sure edwards nicked one on the card, but remember the rematch—lee came out slow as a sunday morning lie-in, then kamaru just did what he’s always done: slip the jab, step behind it, and boom—left hand turns the lights off like someone flicked the mains switch. the bloke next to me in croydon had it spot on: “same glove, same mind, same damn chin.” and colin manna? give the lad a break—he’s half a step up from a promotional tool they wheel out for the pay-per-view flyers, and yet here we are pretending his cv somehow drags usman down a peg? mate, half this division couldn’t last five minutes in a real gym if kamaru so much as glared at ’em wrong.

Bloody hell, lads, I just finished rewriting Kamaru’s last two fight breakouts in my spreadsheets—gloves-off, no fluff—and what jumps off the page isn’t a tombstone but a looping pattern: one eye tweak, one medical pull, both times the division’s reaction was to queue-jump with the “washed” sign instead of sitting through the rematch credits. Colin Manna’s Vegas rebrand? More like a £1.8M payday for a bloke who hadn’t even cracked the top ten welterweights on the board by the time the referee waved it off at the weigh-in. And Edwards—two cracks at the belt in three years and still couldn’t land the jab clean the second time around when Kamaru’s left hand lit up the darkest corner of the cage like a Christmas tree. You watch the Croydon pub footage again and tell me it’s the champion shrinking; it’s Edwards shrinking into his own footwork while Kamaru still sketches the same geometry on the canvas he did against Lawler in that casino basement. But here’s the kicker I keep scribbling in the margin: none of these performances have ever gone beyond two fights. The moment we treat two losses the way we used to treat a single tap-out, we’re handing the narrative to the next hungry kid who’s never had to stare down 50K roaring faces when the lights go out. Half this room wouldn’t survive the first five minutes of a sparring session against Robbie Lawler circa 2017, yet we’re busy folding the championship belt into a paper aeroplane. Maybe the jab’s slower, maybe the leg kicks aren’t snapping quite as loud—but if a middle-aged black belt can still carve up a fresh-faced welterweight in BJJ class, is the division really ready to write a permanent IOU on the greatest gate-opener it’s seen since Jones v Gustafsson? Open the ledger after the third fight, not the second.