In lead up to UFC 278, Kamaru Usman’s manager Ali Abdelaziz was quite visibly enthused by the prospect of Usman beating Anderson Silva’s record. Abdelaziz also touted Usman as his biggest client – over Khabib.
“You can say Khabib a little bit retired early, you can say Henry retired a little bit early, right?” Abdelaziz explained.
“Right now, it’s tough man. I love all of them. Everybody knows how close I am to Khabib and how I love them.”
“I love Kamaru too but right now, the way Kamaru is doing it, I don’t think anybody’s doing it the way Kamaru is doing it and he’s willing to go up to light heavyweight and do a two-division champion and skip a weight division.”
“You have to give it to Kamaru right now. Wherever he is at with his career, it’s Kamaru.”
But in the sport of Mixed Martial Arts, everything can change in a split second. This was the case for Kamaru Usman.
After overcoming some adversity in Round 1 of Leon Edwards clash, Usman managed to recover and enforce his game on Edwards for the following 3 rounds.
In the reaction video, another Abdelaziz client, former champion Henry Cejudo can be heard saying: “Hey Ali, easy money bro, easy money”
In Round 5 – Usman was coming out on top all up until the last minute. At that point Edwards fainted and caught Usman with a major headkick knocking him out cold in process. To Edwards’ credit, he didn’t try to layer on the punishment on Usman and walked off before Herb Dean had a chance to call it off.
Usman struggled regaining consciousness and had to remain seated for another minute to regain composure. There was no interview for Usman who was ushered out of the arena promptly and taken by an ambulance to get checked out.
Luckily, Usman seems to have suffered no major injury in process and was caught facetiming Dana White from the hospital. He was subsequently released and traveled back home from Utah – where the card was held.