UFC: Leon Edwards’ middleweight dream meets ‘easy fight’ claim

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American mixed martial artist Anthony Jay Smith opined that welterweight champion Leon Edward’s desire to climb up to the middleweight division was to seek an easy fight.

Leon Edwards (20-3 MMA, 12-2 UFC) previously announced that the last person he was going to contest with in the welterweight division was Colby Covington (17-3 MMA, 12-3 UFC), and the bout will take place on December 16.

Speaking on the champion’s decision, Anthony Smith said that Leon Edwards would not be in a hurry to face a middleweight champion if Khamzat Chimaev (another respectable UFC fighter) was the middleweight champion.

‘Of course, he’s going to want to move up right now. If Khamzat (Chimaev) was the champion, I don’t know if we’d see Leon running to middleweight so quickly, but I think we have a champion in Sean Strickland that he believes matches up well with him, and it stylistically makes a lot of sense,’ Smith discussed. ‘I agree with some of the frustration. Listen, if I had a world title, maybe I’d do the same sh*t.’

What Smith wanted the champion to do was to first beat all the good fighters in his weight class before seeking something bigger.

‘I think you’ve got to clear out your division,’ suggested Smith. ‘Leon moving up, that one hits a little harder than some of the previous ones. Like, come on, dude.

‘I like Leon a lot, big Leon fan, but he’s only ever fought Kamaru Usman in title fights. There are a lot of title challengers coming. You got his next fight with Colby; Belal is going to be in there.

‘There’s some up-and-comers. There’s Shavkat (Rakhmonov), Ian Garry. There’s guys we got to keep rolling. Gilbert Burns is right there.

‘He’s one win away from a title shot. He’s got a tough list of people coming his way. I just don’t know if now is the time to move up.’

Sean Strickland formerly beat Israel Adesanya in a huge upset and is preparing to meet his first challenger. Leon Edwards can get a chance to contest for the middleweight title in the near future if he succeeds in beating Covington in December.