Kamaru Usman has vowed to ‘get violent’ in his trilogy bout with Leon Edwards on Saturday, as the former champion bids to regain the welterweight title in the UFC 286 main event.
Usman, who outpointed Edwards in 2015, lost the title to the Jamaican-born Briton in August, suffering a head-kick knockout after controlling his old foe for most of the fight.
The Nigerian-American will take on Edwards at London’s O2 Arena on Saturday, and Usman has claimed that he is in a rare, violent mindset heading into the bout.
“I go in there to dominate, I go in there to win, that has never changed,” Usman, 35, said at a media day on Wednesday (15 March). It’s time for me to go in there and get violent.
“I’ve felt violent going into three fights. I felt violent going into the Sergio Moraes fight [in 2017], because I’d been asking for a top-15 [opponent], and I felt disrespected that the UFC matchmakers kept giving me guys that weren’t in the top 15. I felt very, very violent and resentful, and I wanted to show that. We saw what happened [Usman knocked out Moraes in Round 1].
“When I fought Colby Covington the first time [in 2019], we all know how that build-up was – what he’d said, what he’d done – all around the world. I felt very violent, and I wanted to get violent. Me and Colby, we’re the best wrestlers arguably in the company, and we didn’t wrestle at all, because I felt violent. I wanted to get violent, and we saw how that fight went [Usman won via fifth-round TKO].
“When I fought Jorge Masvidal the second time [in 2021], with all that happened... You guys are failing to understand, we both flew across the world [for the first fight, in 2020], and I was the only one who trained for a completely different guy [Masvidal stepped in for Gilbert Burns, who caught Covid]. I don’t even want to disclose what injuries I was going through for that fight. I actually had to quarantine in Vegas, didn’t sleep, and I fought in the morning, and I dominated him. Then after that fight was when [Masvidal] made all the excuses. It upset me to where I felt violent in that second fight, and we all saw what happened [Usman won via second-round KO].
“In this fight, I’m starting to get that feeling. Some fights, you want to be clean and get out of there and not feel anything; this fight, I want to feel it all.”
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