Can Leon Edwards be a dominant champion in the UFC?

The UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) is currently enjoying huge viewing figures and is growing in popularity. Spearheaded in the previous decade by the likes of Conor McGregor, the organization has grown from strength to strength over the past 10 years.

This trend doesn’t look like it’s going to slow down soon. The UFC receives high praise for matching the best challengers against the champions in each weight class, while sports like boxing have witnessed their viewership drop amid poor cards and badly matched fights.

The UFC certainly excels in this category, creating huge fights and cards stacked with quality, on a regular basis. Although Dana White has received some criticism for not paying his stars quite as well as some boxers are paid, they still receive huge paychecks for their time in the octagon.

Leon Edwards was originally born in Jamaica but moved to Birmingham, England, when he was nine years old. Initially involved in street crime when he was in his youth, his mother worried that he might end up on the same road as his father, who was murdered.

However, Leon changed the trajectory of his life and agreed to join an MMA gym. He has since credited the sport with saving his life and providing positive solutions to fight his way out of crime and poverty.

Despite the rising popularity of the UFC, it is considered a new sport, especially compared to other combat sports such as boxing.

Even as recently as a decade ago, finding gambling markets for the UFC would have been difficult. However, placing a bet using an online sportsbook is now the preferred method for many of us. The UFC now has comprehensive and in-depth gambling markets for you to browse.

The UFC has had many iconic stars over the years. In the early years, it had fighters such as Chuck Liddell. He paved the way for the more well-known names to break through into the sport – moving it from mid-sized venues to huge arenas like the Vivint Arena and the O2 Arena, London.

It would be naïve to place the responsibility for the popularity of the UFC on one individual. However, you could make a case for Dana White as the most important figure in the rise of the UFC.

He is widely considered to be the mastermind behind the organization – his business strategy has been pivotal and integral in establishing the success of the sport on a global scale.

As we touched on earlier in the article, one of the key reasons the UFC continues to grow in popularity is its ability to match the best with the best. The Vivint Arena we mentioned played host to the most recent UFC event – UFC 278.

This is where Leon Edwards dethroned “The Nigerian Nightmare” Kamaru Usman – knocking him out with a sensational head kick in front of over 18,000 fans and millions more worldwide.

Usman is considered one of the most recognizable faces in the sport. Despite his defeat to Edwards, he still sits in the top five in the pound-for-pound rankings.

Leon Edwards has made the combat sports world sit up and take notice after his devastating knockout of such an established and well-recognized champion. Usman will be back; talks of a rematch are already on the cards.

However, Edwards may be more interested in moving on to bigger and more lucrative events. There has even been talk of him defending his new welterweight strap at Villa Park. The huge stadium in Birmingham is the home of Aston Villa Football Club.

The stadium is situated in the Aston area of Birmingham, where Edwards grew up.

Leon Edwards has shown in his past several fights that he has taken it up a level and has more than what it takes to compete at the highest level of the welterweight division.

It is important that there is a caliber of fights that match the public appetite for Edwards to become the breakthrough star and the dominant champion in the UFC.

Great fighters are only as great as their foes. For example, Muhammad Ali is widely considered to be the greatest heavyweight of all time in boxing. However, would he have been considered this if it wasn’t for the boxing prowess of Joe Frazier, George Foreman and Ken Norton?

Khabib Nurmagomedov is considered one of the greatest UFC fighters of all time. He is also considered the number one lightweight in the history of the sport and has been one of the marquee names of UFC in the last decade.

This is not only down to his incredible level of grappling and durability but also the caliber of fights he competed in and won. His incredible rise through the UFC rankings resulted in him blowing away the best contenders of his day.

His fight against Conor McGregor was the most watched PPV event in the sport’s history, with 2.4 million PPV buys.

This is the sort of marquee rivalry that Edwards may need to establish himself as a dominant champion in the UFC. Hot on his heels are serious contenders such as Colby Covington and Khamzat Chimaev, so there’s plenty of potential for fierce rivalry and huge PPV events.

Many fans and analysts consider Khamzat Chimaev to be one of the next big things in the UFC. Plenty of fighters and fans see him as the next possible crossover star in the sport. He seems to have all the tools needed to switch between welterweight and middleweight, which generally causes serious problems for the top fighters in each respective weight class.

However, if Edwards can pit himself against the likes of Chimaev and Covington and come out on top, there is no reason why he can’t go on to be a dominant champion in the UFC. These two fighters would likely provide him with his toughest tests but greatest rewards if he were victorious.