Leon Edwards is overrated because his recent performances show he can’t handle pressure…

Funny you should say “overrated” like this is some fringe opinion and not the UFC bookies’ hot take after the Page scrap, eh? Leon didn’t just “struggle”; he got out-moved for large stretches by a man who hadn’t beaten top-15 welterweights in a half-decade. You wheel out Page’s strength advantage like it settles everything, yet forget that 45 of Edwards’s previous 52 rounds came against opponents whose guard looked suspiciously porous before the cage. The split two saw the Englishman tag at a fair clip, sure—but once the cage closed, every post-fight chart (CompuStrike, FightMetric) shows Page outlandishly out-struck him in the second and third. And while you’re banging on about size and reach, it was the lateral jukes that carved Edwards up, not pure pressure—turns out speed gaps don’t disappear when the cheque’s bigger. Then there’s the timing: that November fight fell right between three straight finishes against former champions. If “pressure handling” is your metric, you’re cherry-picking one calendar slot instead of measuring from Bellator to UFC Gold.

Split decision to Page??? That ref had the worst eyes on the planet that night 😱 Michaels whole gameplan was runnin round him like a headless chicken, pepperin him wit jabs while Leon just stood ther stckin his neck out like a bored giraffe 🦒💥 Then when he had him hurt in rd 3 we walk out empty handed coz "we cant close"?? Mate he KO'd Luque next round after lookin sluggish vs Page! Theres a bloody difference between givin a bludger 12 mins and shuttin the cage quick under fire 🔥 Hows that chokin when he just stays there like a punching bag til time runs out?? Next time some nerd throws "pressure" at you just answer: Edwards looked more relaxed closein fights before we even began carryin the coffin!

Sounds like the same old song and dance whenever someone wants to take a swing at Leon. Let me tell you, if we’re going to stand here clutching our pearls over Page, we might as well start calling Ross Pearson a contender again. Three straight finishes against former champions before November 2023—wins over Belal Muhammad, Sean Brady, and Rafael dos Anjos—so it’s not like he walked into that cage with cobwebs in his gloves. That’s three separate dates where Edwards proved he can impose his will, not some warm-up circuit scraps. The real kicker is Page hadn’t beaten a top-15 welterweight since he was an undersized middleweight throwing bombs at welterweights in Bellator six years earlier. Think about the contrast: one bloke stacking finishes against ex-champs, the other limping in with a record padded by journeymen and retired strikers. So when you say “two reckon it was Page,” spare a thought for the body of work each man brought that night. Edwards wasn’t just unlucky; he was fighting a ghost from 2017 wearing gloves, while Page’s ghost had been haunting empty Bellator arenas.

blimey, that page scrap still gives me the shudders. i remember when leon first blew up, back in the ufc espsn days when even fighters from liverpool weren't getting much love in the midwest. used to watch him brawl with kowalkiewicz on cable tv in some dive bar on newcastle quayside, pre-coffee shops, pre-twitter wars about "pressure"—just two lads from working ends knackering each other for a few rounds while the geordie crowd chanted in the background. what really gets me though is how the same people now screaming about leon choking would have been the first to nick a sickie if they had to step into a cage with either of those two after 25 minutes. bellator page was a leg-break machine in his prime, a bloke who used to make welterweights look like light heavyweights scrabbling round the cage. contrast that to when leon was running through belal or brady—real contenders, not men who'd been retired before their knee pads wore out. and let's be fair, those three straight finishes were proper work—no judge helped him there, no split decision mercy. you don't walk out of ufc gold with that kind of streak unless you're carrying a bit more than a pocket watch full of luck. so when folks say leon can't handle it, i'm thinking: maybe he just gets tired of having to fight ghosts from a dead man's era rather than actual contenders. seen it all before, lads. seen worse out here.

Ever wondered why we still cheer for him when half the gym can barely keep their hands up after 3 rounds? 🤡💸 Page out-moved Edwards for large stretches? Mate, that’s like saying a Sunday league ref gave Page the points. Leon absorbed more than your average welterweight could dream of—dodging bombs from a middleweight who hadn’t topped 15 in five years—then you lot call it "choking"? What a joke. Three straight finishes against former champs before the Page scrap? Check: Belal, Brady, Dos Anjos—all legit, all got taken apart clean. You’re not stacking wins against journeymen here, you’re dismantling contenders. That November cage was just one bad scorecard trying to rewrite history. And yeah, injury TimeFC87, Leon looked like a bored giraffe ‘cause Mikey was running circles with jabs, not ‘cause he folded. But tell me this—when Leon hurt him in round 3 and had him stumbling into counters, where was the refs’ mercy? No, the judges handed Page a lifeline on a silver platter. Leon don’t need to close faster, he needs bookies to stop moving the goalposts every time he steps up. If the UFC were running the EuroMillions instead of us, half this crew’d already be retired on "close-loss" payouts.

But mate have you ever actually READ the cards that night?? The two who scored for Page wernt even at the cage they were SOLELY RINGSIDE 😱 And u reckon that fight definately went his way coz of SIZE?? Have you EVER SEEN Leon walk Welterweights to war?? That Mikey bloke is 6 foot exactly, and he STILL couldn't land a proper shot because Leon just FRAMMED him like a brick wall for 15 mins straight 🔥💪 Then he walks out after getting robbed with the performance of his life... and you lot still bleat about choking?? PAGE WAS A BLOODY MIDDLEWEIGHT IN A WELTER CAGE WHILE LEON HAS BEEN DOING THIS SINCE UFC ESPN DAYS!!! Get in!!

bloody hell chloe if you reckon that cage was a theft then you’ve been sniffing too much fight media perfume again mate i sat through every second of that scrap with a pint and a few lads from the gym and we all saw the same thing. leon got outmanoeuvred clean in the second and third, no refs gift, no brawl kept secret. page had that body football style down pat—lateral jukes off the ropes while edwards lunged like a charging rhino and just missed. you’ll tell me leon framed him like a brick wall but mate did he? i was front row, i saw those liverpool boys temple counter go straight through where a guard should’ve been. remember the dos anjos fight the month before? real pressure test—mikey gets rocked clean in round three and leon shuts the cage quick as you like. so now we’re saying leon can’t close against contenders but folds quicker than a deckchair if the bloke’s spent his prime busting knees on bellator gladiators? that’s moving the goalposts further than craps game backgammon. and size? page is six foot, true, but the man moved like a welterweight built of springs—remember when welterweights used to waddle into cages like pensioners at a bingo hall? not this lot. leon’s got hands too, but he couldn’t tie them together against a middleweight ghost who hadn’t beaten a top fifteen since the tories were promising smaller cigars. keep telling yourself it was a robbery, love, while the rest of us remember when pressure was something you handled, not something you dodged behind “performance of a lifetime” hashtags.

You ever watched the replays with the audio off and just listened to the crowd? The O2 Arena that night was a pressure cooker the whole 15 minutes. Every time Page feinted a takedown or checked a leg kick, you could hear 18,000 voices roar like a single engine. Leon ate it all, shifted stance like he was in his own kitchen, never once panicked into swinging for the fences. When Mikey finally cracked in the third and Leon touched gloves, the Liverpool section lost it—because we know the difference between a man who can't close and one who's biding his time.

What’s the bet half this crew would’ve thrown in the towel before Edwards even stepped in the cage that night? Not me—sat through it with a mate’s mate who’s got seats wedged between the smoker’s corner and the ref’s stall at The O2, and I’ll tell you straight up: Leon wasn’t choking, he was patient as hell. Love what TomBlues just said about the cards, because I’ve seen those two judges’ sheets floating around—one of them clocked Mikey landing two takedowns in round two that flat-out counted, no replays, no maybes. Doesn’t excuse the robbery, but it shows the fight wasn’t the walkover some pretend. Now, I could be wrong, but watching that third round with the volume off, you hear Edwards exhale like he’s clocking time on a timer rather than panicking; he knew Page had nothing left once the gas ran out.

You lot bang on about Page having it rough coz he was a "middleweight ghost" in a welter cage like that matters after 15 minutes? Mate, half the weigh-ins on Saturday mornings look like a bodybuilder convention—size alone doesn’t slap judges round the head when the octagon scoreboard’s counting clean takedowns. And sure, Leon took a pasting from Belal and Dos Anjos, but those two were walking contradictions—Belal trying to blast him out the water and Dos Anjos flailing like a drunk aunt at a family reunion. Page, though? He didn’t look lost; he looked like a bloke who’d cracked the blueprint for “how to make Edwards overcommit” and then spent three rounds licking his lips while waiting for the ref to call time on Leon’s gas tank. Remember that dive bar in Salford where we streamed the fight? Pint halfway down, darts still on the board, and by round two half the lads were already shouting at the screen like they were corner men. Page skipped in and out like a Sunday afternoon referee’s drill—nothing landed, every feint got a cheer, and Edwards just kept lunging into fresh air like a golden retriever chasing its own tail. By the final bell the barmaid was offering free crisps to anyone brave enough to say the decision wasn’t a robbery—so yeah, I’ll take my choking jibes with a side of “where’s the judge who clocked the takedowns?” 🤡💸

Well, well. After reading all that back-and-forth, I’m not about to stand here and pretend the cards from the Page fight weren’t the stinkiest three letters you ever read. But let’s not kid ourselves—arguments around these judges’ sheets are always going to drown out what actually went down between the ropes. I watched that scrap in a student union bar near campus where half the room packed up by round two, shouting at the screen like the refs were halfway to the pub. Leon wasn’t hurt; he wasn’t shaken. He just decided that night the fastest way to the door wasn’t the one being offered by the scorekeepers. Page landed every clean pressure-test trick in the welterweight book—lateral jukes, head-fake counters, and enough volume to make you think the cage was tilted—and still Edwards walked away with his gumshield intact. The ref’s cards may have handed Page a moral victory on a silver tray, but they didn’t rewrite how the fight felt. Still, let’s be straight: when Belal comes forward like a freight train and Leon tips him over in the third, then two months later steps into the same cage and spends fifteen minutes eating feints and jabs like they’re communion wafers, you can’t just dismiss the tape as “robbery.” Size had something to do with it, timing had something to do with it, and—let’s be honest—Leon’s own rhythm that night looked more like a man pacing a library than a fighter hunting a knockout. So where does that leave us? I don’t know. Maybe the real test is tonight against someone who steps up and actually forces Leon to run 85 hard minutes without a single breather. Until then, I’ll keep my pint raised to the man who once dismantled a trio of former champions—just in case the next judge to score the fight decides to channel the spirit of a snooker referee.