Leon Edwards on the Belal Muhammad Fight

What's your Rogan experience? Well, I think some guys can at certain stages, right? Like there's moments in fights where don't you feel like you're in a zone sometimes and it just everything's flowing. Saturday night. Saturday night. Yeah. I felt good all backstage because leading up to the fight, everyone's like, Rin-Rus, Rin-Rus. So I was kind of waiting for some feeling to say, where's Rin-Rus, right? But I felt great backstage and I preferred fighting with no crowd. Did you really? Yeah. You get to the apex and it's like, you get there, you wrap your hands, you warm up, you fight. There's no hanging around for five hours backstage and just, it's like a gym, right? You get there, you're warmed and you just go compete. So I preferred it for sure. Do you prefer it because of the, there's no noise, no distractions, no nothing? And you can hear your coaches clearly. Yeah. Instructions clearly. I'm a very good listener to my coaches. So I... I wouldn't say I prefer it, but it was good. I enjoyed it. You have been in a very interesting position over the last few years, where you are one of the top UFC welterweights, but just because of bad fortune, just things just haven't totally lined up correctly. Fights have fallen apart, injuries and sicknesses and a bunch of shit went down and you're... until Saturday night, you had been kind of ignored by a lot of fans. Like a lot of people don't understand what level you're at. They don't understand. I think they saw it for the brief moment that happened, that you fought Saturday night, but then unfortunately there's the injury. You know, Balal has the accidental eye poke and it's another unfortunate situation, but at least during that... First round? Yeah, the first round, they got to see your skill level. Yeah, for sure. I was just getting warmed up as well. Over the last year and a half, I've learned so much that I wanted to show and to have that incident happen. It's one in a million, right? When you prepare, you can't be like, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that. And then when that happened, I was like, I thought I thought it was OK. Take five minutes, lay it out a little bit, then hopefully we can fight again. But he's always that bad. His eye was so fucked. And was it... It wasn't quite... It wasn't a poke. No, I wanted to poke. It was like a knuckle. If you see the picture, it's like, you're kicking, right? So when you're kicking, you don't hold your fist and kick like this, right? You kind of use it to momentum to swing your arm back. And as I was doing it, it kind of just grazed his eyes. Well, not grazed, it kind of went deep, but it grazed his eyes a bit. But was it like the front knuckles? It looked like it from the picture. I couldn't tell. I didn't feel it. I thought it was the kid that got him in his body and then fell down. At the start, you know, they wouldn't start grabbing his eyes. I was like, oh, shit, I got caught him in his eye. You know, I thought it was literally the kid that caught him. I did this and then... I think Dana put a photo on his Instagram, Jamie. I think it was a knuckle. We weren't doing this for sure. It's so unfortunate, man. But I mean, for you, what I was getting at was that it has to be so frustrating. Here you are. Another ad blocker. Here you are. You have this long layoff and fights keep getting canceled. And then you finally get a fight. You're performing really well. And then this happens. It's like the bad luck, right? The last year or so. Just one after another. After the Woodley fight, I was meant to fight Woodley in London in March and had that canceled the week before on the Sunday before the fight. And then from there, just bad luck, bad luck, bad luck trickling down. So... So it's like the bottom of your finger. So it's not like it's straightforward. It's like it's just getting in there. That's terrible. And it wasn't the eyeball, right? It's like the under the eyelid. Yeah. You know, I saw a bit of Sunday in the casino in Vegas and his eyes was fine. Just the it's the lid that was a breeze. Yeah, he said the vision started returning the next day. And now he said there's no permanent damage. So he's going to be OK. He had his lid stitched up. I wish him well. So good. He's a great guy and it was a great opponent for you, too, because he's so relentless. He's you know, he's constantly moving forward. He's a tough guy. He's durable. Yeah, he's very durable. I'm going to call him with a head kick in the first round. And I kind of rushed my work a little bit. I kind of went wild and started swinging, swinging for him. But I should have picked my shots a little bit better. But he's tough. He's durable. But he doesn't beat me in any given day. You know, I believe it will fight ten times. I'll beat him ten times. And that's just it. Is it was a late stepping for Hamza fell out. And I think you should go back work his way back up. And then hopefully we can meet somewhere down the line. But for now, I'm looking towards the title shot. I'm looking towards being a world champion. Do you think that the title shot is warranted just because your previous work and just because of the great first round that you had? But do you feel like there's any unfinished business because of the way that fight ended? With Bela? Yeah, with Bela. Um, I don't believe so. I think from the first round, normally I'm a slow starter, right? So if that's my that's my first round, you're not making it to the to the fifth. You know, so I think everyone saw where the fight was going and it wouldn't have made it to number five. So I understand your confidence. I really do. And this is not to demean that at all. But you got to you got to give the guy an opportunity. Right. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, if here's my point, if the fight went the first round, if the eye poke didn't happen, the referee just stopped the fighter. But like, what are you doing? Well, you know where this fight's going. Well, you don't know where a fight's going, because fights are crazy. Like weird shit happens. People slip. Guy gets them in a choke. Like weird stuff happens. You know, people get injured. You know, someone throws a calf kick. All of a sudden, your leg goes numb. You get hit with a punch. Weird shit happens. Fights are crazy. No, it's crazy. But you know what I'm saying? No, no, no, I know you're saying, but I would have hoped I would have won the fight clearly. Joe, normally I'm a slow starter in the first round. Right. I know. So I would have felt great Saturday night. And even though I felt good, but I was not beating me. I completely appreciate your confidence. But as a fan of you and as a fan of Bilal, I don't think it would be a bad thing to run back. Not straight away. I'm looking to that's my nine, my nine fight right in a row. I won an eight for one streak for Bilal. I would have won the fight. So that'd be nine fight without without loss from getting beat by Ousman five, six years ago. So I feel I've done enough work now to prove that I belong at least in no more content to fight or title fight. You know, so I can totally appreciate your position, but I can also appreciate Bilal's position. I know where it's coming from. I would say if I was there, I would probably do the same thing, right? Is right. Number one for in for in and this big opportunities first main event, number three guy in the world. So I know where he's approaching it from, but I am looking, looking for my own career, right? I want to look towards the title. I understand. Hopefully we'll get it. Yeah, you've had all these weird situations where things fell apart. It's it's very unfortunate. And did you feel like the Hamza fight was strange too? Because like here's this guy who has only had a few fights in the UFC. He's got a lot of hype behind him because he's had like the Mirshard fight was a great result. Yeah, fantastic. But then all of a sudden he's fighting you. Yeah, like it was weird, right? Because we will two weeks before that, Dana White came out on the night, never in the fight Leon or no one in top five. Then next week is like, you want to fight him? I was like, you just said I'm too high rank for him. But where do you think that came from? I don't know. I think everyone was turning him down, you know, and no one was turning me down as well. So this is OK. You want to find him? I was like, OK, what about Kobe? Is that Kobe said no. What about my son? I said, I said, I said, no. What about Wonderboy Wonderboy is injured? So it's OK. You got the most hype in the division now that could like pick it back off to get to a world title shot. Right. And this was a kid, Dana White, build him up. Is this this kid that can't be beaten is tough. And so I was like, I'll go out there. I'll I'll find him. And when I beat him, I'll fight for the whole title. And that was my plan, right, to use this hype they're building around him to get me to a world title shot. I'm always looking towards the title shot, right? So anyway, I can get there easier. I was going to do your hands out to get there. Catch new episodes of the Joe Rogan experience for free. Only on Spotify. Watch back catalog JRE videos on Spotify, including clips. Easily, seamlessly switch between video and audio experience on Spotify. You can listen to the JRE in the background while using other apps and can download episodes to save on data costs all for free. Spotify is absolutely free. You don't have to have a premium account to watch new JRE episodes. You just need to search for the JRE on your Spotify app. Go to Spotify now to get this full episode of the Joe Rogan experience.