Usman's former coach explained the reason for his early defeat to Edwards

Henry Hooft, former trainer of the UFC welterweight champion Kamaru Usman, explained why the Nigerian lost Leon Edwards knockout, missing a high kick.

“When he worked for me, I always gave him a lot of training with his partners, so that they would load him with kicks and often hit them. And he got used to reacting to them, got used to them. But then he didn’t have that kind of work, he switched more to his paws, I noticed both in this fight and when they fought for the third time that he didn’t react very well to high kicks. He worked a lot on his feet, improved his boxing well, but you still need training with your partners. Kickboxing is very important.”