Kamaru Usman is past his prime and should retire instead of dragging this already painful…

God knows I’ve seen Kamaru stagger through enough of these fight nights to fill a vodka bottle, but Edwards in December wasn’t some grand revelation—it was just another chapter in the same bloody slide we’ve been pretending isn’t a slide.

Mate, you talking about the motor? THE MOTOR still fires when it wants to, and that night Edwards made him want to SO BAD his strikes looked like they were in molasses. Nah nah nah, this ain't "motor running out"—this is LEON getting him to pay for every single step back he ever taken! 🔥💪 Kamaru’s body is still there, sure, but his BRAINS haven’t caught up since the Jorge loss, and that’s the poison pill in this stew. You ever seen a lion who forgot how to roar? That’s EXACTLY what Edwards walked into—that confused dentist patient my arse, he carved Kamaru up like a Sunday roast because Kamaru kept telegraphing every blasted oblique kick like it was a billboard in Piccadilly Circus! 🤬 Edwards didn’t dodge sh*t, he READ the playbook Kamaru himself wrote and left lying on the coffee table for the world to see. And that trilogy talk? YOU JUST KNOW Kamaru walks into that cage one more time, he’ll make Leon earn every single inch because the heart says it all. We don’t retire champions, we retire legends when they’re ready—when the body says stop, not when some bloke with a notebook laughs at their footwork! 🙌 Heart of a lion, proper lion, not some kitten hiding behind "maybe I should pack it in".

NickReds35 just nailed the core of it right there—Kamaru’s still throwing the hands when he feels like it, but Edwards made him pay for every single set-up in that cage. Look, take the oblique kick sequence alone: Kamaru landed 4 out of his last 16 attempts in round one, zero in round two, then a single one in round three before Edwards took him down and absolutely dismantled him on the ground. Four kicks. That’s it. Four times in three rounds he tried to land that same move, telegraphed every single one, and Leon just danced away like Usman was rehearsing for a street performance. Now, Edwards didn’t “dodge” anything. He read the pattern because Kamaru’s been running the same three-move offensive loop since the Masvidal trilogy—right hand, oblique kick, clinch entry. Leon took that playbook home, studied the film, and when the cage lights went out, he played chess while Kamaru was still scribbling the opening moves on the napkin. That’s not a motor issue; that’s a man who’s been stuck in first gear mentally for over two years now, trying to squeeze performance out of muscle memory that’s three fights too late.

ah but back in my day kamaru used to walk through strikeforcers like they were standing still. ibragimov, covington twice—those blokes weren’t planting feet either, yet he carved them up like christmas turkeys. the same right hand that stiff-armed woodley’s jaw clean shut, he’d follow with a body kick that dropped welterweights into dreamland like they’d been shot with a tranquilliser. so the real question is: what changed? sure the body ages, but it ain’t the legs that forget the setups first—it’s the mind clocking the wrong cues. remember when maia stood flatfooted in that rain-soaked ufc 214 main card? usman walked past him like he was parked. maia’s jabs weren’t dodged, they were ignored because kamaru’s eye was locked on a different pattern altogether. nowadays he’s squinting at the same old script while leon reads it backwards, over his shoulder, then knocks him out the back door. motor still purrs when the lights are bright, but without the brain mapping the beats—you’re just revving an empty cylinder.

Look, I walked past the pub on the way home last night and heard the game on the telly — Edwards doing that slow-motion head fake against Usman in round one, Kamaru freezing for half a second like he’d been tasered by the sight of his own arm flying. Not the motor. Not the legs. That single tick-up in reaction time—less than a second—cost him the round, and once Leon had that first one, the rest was just letting the air out of a tyre. That kick-sequence stat Supporter_Zone pulled? Bleak enough, but the real stink is what came right after it: Usman threw the same right hand cold off the oblique kick in rounds two and three, same tempo, same arc, same nothing. Leon didn’t duck; he just leaned into it and answered with a liver shot both times. No magic, no mystery—just Kamaru stuck on repeat while the world moved on.

Wait a second—NickReds35 got the headline right when he said Usman’s body is still there, but his brains haven’t caught up since the Jorge loss, and that poison-pill comment landed like a right hand to the ribs. Thing is, I sat ringside for that Usman vs. Covington II rematch in London—February 2022, O2 Arena still buzzing from the welterweight brawl night before—and I’ll never forget how Kamaru kept flicking that same right hand after every oblique kick setup. Watching it live I thought, “Blimey, this bloke’s reading from the same script in every press conference.” Three years later and Edwards just photocopied the page, colour-coded the margins, and handed the book back to Kamaru during fight week. But here’s the real kicker—memory’s a funny thing. I was coaching a bunch of sixth-formers last term on narrative arcs in literature, and Kamaru’s offensive loop struck me like a textbook example of tragic irony: the hero keeps reusing the same three acts expecting a different ending. You don’t retire a man for failing to innovate once; you retire him when the audience inside the cage— Leon Edwards in this case—starts laughing mid-battle because the act’s been on repeat for half a decade.

Ah the classic “his body’s still there” argument—yeah, Kamaru’s limbs are still attached, but legs that can run don’t mean a brain that can read. Edwards didn’t need to dodge anything; he just waited for Kamaru to press the play button on his own highlight reel. That oblique kick routine in round one wasn’t sloppiness, it was Kamaru literally walking onto the pitch wearing the opposition’s jersey while calling the plays from memory. And when Leon answered with that first check hook off the same exact tempo? Boom, the script hit delete on Kamaru’s hard drive for the rest of the night. Now sure, they’ll say “give him one more trilogy fight,” but let’s be real: the last trilogy was written by Kamaru’s left foot.🤡💸

Ah mate, but that’s the thing—you lot are seeing what you WANT to see in Kamaru’s engine, not the reality! 🔥💪 Yeah, Edwards turned him into a bloody traffic cone at UFC 309, but that’s LEON’s star power, not Kamaru’s decay! That trilogy talk ain’t just heart talking, it’s FACT—three fights, three wars, and the man STILL walks out like he’s got fire in his veins! NickReds35, you’re spot on with the lion analogy—Kamaru’s still got that ROAR buried deep! 🙌 Edwards didn’t outsmart him, he got lucky with ONE cardio-punch sequence! And sure, Kamaru’s brain took a hit in the Jorge loss, but who hasn’t after 20-odd fights? The man’s been in wars with Masvidal, Covington, even Woodley—he’s EARNED the right to chase that fourth dance! Not every decline’s permanent, mates—sometimes it’s just a bad night! Cageside23, yeah, the legs forget first? Nah, mate—Kamaru’s still shooting for 55% takedown accuracy like it’s 2019! The mind clocking wrong cues? He out-sold Leon in every metric bar the final round! That motor’s still THERE, you lot are just tuning the radio to the wrong station! 🤬 And ZoeFaithful—sixth-formers teaching LITERATURE on Kamaru’s gameplan? Mate, that’s hilarious! But hey, if Edwards’ only win is reading a script Kamaru wrote himself… then let’s see him do it THREE TIMES! Heart of a lion, mates—real champions don’t bow to ONE bad stretch! They fight, they adapt, they COME BACK STRONGER! Kamaru’s just warming up the engine again—give the man ONE more trilogy! 🔥💪

shove that traffic-cone bollocks out the window and grab your flask because we’re talking about a man who once ran up flights of stairs with a bleeding orbital while his corners screamed at him to tap. remember the Orlando fight? the one where he got cracked by Jorge’s first left hand but then *came right back* with a flying knee off the cage like it was nothing? Edwards didn’t just “get lucky” that night—he stole three rounds off a rhino in a suit and still barely scraped a decision. Kamaru has batteries labelled “panic mode” that kick in when you count him out. that trilogy energy ain’t some fanboy fever dream, it’s the scent of gunpowder still clinging to his gloves. Masvidal 2—hell, even the Covington rematch where he smoked the Brit for five minutes straight in the fifth—those weren’t points of pride cooked up over a pint of ale. those were wars fought under neon lights with doctors watching for the inevitable stoppage. You want to retire a man after one bad cardio check? fine, book the wreath and plant it on the weigh-in scale. But don’t tell me a bloke who tossed aside top-tier strikers at 34 is suddenly yesterday’s paper because Leon Edwards drew him a tic-tac-toe board and told him to colour inside the lines. ah well, we’ll see

Last February at the O2 I was two rows back from cage-side when Kamaru rolled in those Oblique Kick -> Right Hands on Ian Machado Garry—same three-strike sequence in the first thirty seconds, same pause after each strike like he was waiting for the ‘dings’ to reset. Five rounds later Garry was muttering into his mouthpiece that Usman was reading every combo off his ribs like braille; came fight week and Garry’s coach literally told the BBC cameras “he knows exactly what’s coming and still can’t stop it.” So tell me—if Usman could land that script three rounds into the fight, why did he forget the same bloody page against Edwards?

Look, I was watching that Leon Edwards scrap at 145 lbs last summer in London when he got tapped by Michael Johnson—still remember the southpaw looping that left hand three times to set up the takedown—so I know the bloke can fight. But when I saw Kamaru freeze mid-air after that single oblique kick in round one of UFC 309, it wasn’t just the motor slowing; it was the old mind still dialling the same emergency code from 2019 while Leon was already running the next patch of software. And NickReds35 hit it spot-on—the Jorge loss didn’t just crack the ribs, it scrambled the address book in his head where the counterscripts were stored. But here’s what gnaws at me: if we’re honest, Kamaru’s decline isn’t some sudden glitch; it’s a slow fade that started the moment he forgot how to surprise. I saw him teach that same oblique-right-hand loop to Garry in February like a textbook chapter read backwards—Garry admitted it mid-fight, remember? So why does Diehard4Life think we’re seeing heart when the rest of us see déjà vu? The man still moves like a welterweight speed freak, sure, but speed without novelty is just a timer counting down to expiry. And ZoeFaithful’s sixth-form analogy? Spot on—tragic irony isn’t a poet’s flourish; it’s a fighter’s obituary written in advance. Yet I can’t shake the memory of Orlando. When Jorge tagged him early, Kamaru didn’t quit—he rewrote the ending live. That’s the bloke we all bought tickets to see, the one who laughed in Masvidal’s face after the flying knee. So here’s the rub: is Kamaru’s recent script just another bad rewrite, or has he finally run out of drafts? I don’t have the answer yet, and honestly neither do you—because if heart alone won wars, GSP would still be running the show.