Leon Edwards is baffled by UFC welterweight champion Kamaru Usman's recent call out of Canelo Alvarez.
Edwards is set to be the next challenger for Usman's title, with the UFC targeting International fight week in July as a date for the fight. Usman is currently recovering from hand surgery but is on course to defend his belt in the summer.
The UFC pound-for-pound No.1 has recently raised eyebrows by calling out boxing star Alvarez for a crossover fight. Usman is confident he can become the first boxer to knockout Alvarez, despite having no professional boxing fights under his belt.
Before 'The Nigerian Nightmare' is to try and book a fight with Alvarez, he needs to get past his old foe Edwards first. 'Rocky' is raring to get his chance to end Usman's 20-fight unbeaten run and become just the second British UFC champion in history.
"I don't know where he's at," Edwards said of Usman. "There's no way he's going to beat Canelo anyway and there's no way he's beating me. I saw something came out the day where he said he's coming out to wrestle for the whole fight, he can do what he wants. I'm ready to go.
"It's either the payday or he's trying to test himself, one or the other. It's not a long career, so if you can get paid get paid. I'll be the champion when he leaves, so I'll take the belt off of him then he can go and do what he wants to do."
Alvarez has dismissed Usman's call out by stating the UFC champion is only in search of a payday to fight him. Usman proposed a fight with Alvarez in September, but the Mexican is scheduled to fulfil his trilogy fight with Gennady Golovkin that month.
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Usman and Edwards are no strangers to each other, meeting at a Fight Night event in 2015 in the early stages of their UFC careers. Usman won that night, but Edwards think both fighters have developed a lot since then and a rematch will play out very differently.
"He's improved loads, but so have I," Edwards added. "When I fought him I was 22 years old, I'm now 30 years old. I've learnt a lot over that space of time but so has he. It'll be a totally different fight from what it was back then, so we have to look at it as a new fight.
Edwards admitted it would "mean everything" to him in bringing a UFC title back to the UK, something that hasn't been done since Michael Bisping became the first UFC fighter to do so when he won the middleweight title in 2016.
