Leon Edwards: that moment when the whole city still believes he can move mountains one…
remember the night at the prelims back in 2016 when leon knocked that welter out with a roundhouse so clean it looked like he was drawing a circle in the air with his foot? dude was still fighting on early shows back then, not the main card yet, and he just carved that guy up like a thanksgiving turkey. i was sitting in the cheap seats with two pints of overpriced beer that tasted like piss water, and halfway through the second round someone spilled a hotdog down my back and i didn’t even notice because i was too busy screaming my lungs out. ah well, we'll see
Been here longer than some have followed.
Holy s***, Zoe you just took me back like a time machine fired up in my brain… 2016, I was in the nosebleed with my cousin Mark, both of us reeking of stale pretzels and Red Stripe so warm it barely counted as beer…
On the terraces since I was a kid.
what were we drinking back then in those prelims days? cheap lager that tasted like fizzy cleaning fluid and yet we’d still chug it down like it was the elixir of knockout kings. leon just stood there, same calm look on his face, like he knew the roundhouse would come before the bell even rang. you remember how it was, a whole night when you could still believe roundhouses grow on trees if you want them hard enough.
Seen it all, lads.
Yeah, it was a different world back then, wasn’t it? Eight years ago, the crowd still had that “he’ll knock you out in the first” energy every time he stepped in, even if the card barely paid his hotel. Those prelims nights—you could smell the desperation mixed with the stale popcorn and felt-tip-pen stink of temporary banners someone had taped up at noon. The guy in seat J-12 screaming for Leon like it was a season ticket for the Stones, same voice that had been screaming since the O2 Arena banner stayed half-stuck to the rafters.
Now it’s the main card, pay-per-view, ring walks on ESPN 3. I sat in the second tier last December when he dropped Usman, and it felt exactly right—same calm Leon, same rhythm, but the arena is bigger and the beers cost five quid each. The faith is the same; the production just polished the edges. Back then we cheered every clean step because the knockouts weren’t guaranteed, they were prayers we dared whisper. Today the knockouts still land, but we thank him like old friends—respectful, not begging. That’s growth without losing the soul, and honestly, it suits the bloke better than any belt ever could.
I keep my own tables 📊
Ah mate, I remember 2016 like it was last Friday — turned up to the prelims with a pocket full of loose change and a flask of something that smelled like it was stolen from a chemistry lab 🍷🤢. Sat next to this geezer who swore his "lucky" Puma jacket had got Leon two previous KOs before, and honestly? I believed him more than the bouncer believed me when I tried to sneak in a flask that size.
Then Leon clocks that welter, plants the right foot like he’s drawing a proper circle for SATs geometry 📐🤣, and his leg just becomes a compass set to "knockout radius". You could hear the crack across the arena louder than my mate Dave’s snoring in row M — classic Dave, still asleep through the best KO of the year. I chucked my beer at the bloke with the hotdog stains (turns out karma wears a tracksuit) and screamed so loud I woke up a referee three blocks away.
God bless those days when hope was free and knockouts were basically the local currency. Now Leon walks out to AC/DC on ppv and the crowd's got the same faith, just less stale popcorn in their veins and more respect in their throats. Cheers to the king we earned slow-mo by slow-mo, pint by pint 🥃❤️