London — Mere minutes after Sean Brady secured a fourth-round submission over Leon Edwards in the main event of Saturday’s UFC London, the O2 Arena had gone silent.
The former welterweight champ, once the biggest name in U.K. MMA, had tapped. It was a rough night for the home team, with Liverpool’s Molly McCann also submitted, retiring after her loss. Nathaniel Wood shone, but Jai Herbert also suffered defeat.
That wasn’t lost on Sean Brady (18-1), speaking with media outlets including Cageside Press backstage following the event. “Yeah it’s pretty quiet in here. It got quiet fast,” Brady observed, not long after what is unquestionably the biggest win of his career.
Brady admitted that he was expecting “a lot worse” from U.K. fans, given he was paired up with a British fave. “It’s not like how you get it when you come to Philly,” he noted.
Brady’s showing in the UFC London main event was nothing short of dominant. Right up to the mounted guillotine that forced the fight-ending tap, Brady had been mopping the floor with the ex-champ, dominating him on the ground. There was a specific point, however, where Brady feels Edwards broke, mentally.
“Leon’s a very technical fighter, but when you make it a real hard fight, he tends to break. And I could see he was breaking, and I knew he broke once he shot on me, because that’s the last place he’d want to be, is on the ground with me,” Brady opined. “So once I knew he wanted to grapple with me, I knew it was going to be over soon.”
Edwards had never before been submitted. With Jack Della Maddalena fighting Belal Muhammad for the welterweight title in May, could Saturday’s showing see Brady at least jump past Shavkat Rakhmonov? The Kazakh fighter was supposed to face Muhammad in December, only for Belal to pull out hurt. And when Belal was ready to go, booked for UFC 315 in May, Rakhmonov was on the shelf.
“I don’t make those calls, the UFC does,” Brady observed. “But I think if you look at the people I’ve been beating, versus Shavkat, I think I have a pretty good— Gilbert Burns and Leon Edwards are my last two, versus his last two, I think his were Wonderboy [Stephen Thompson] and Ian Garry. I’ve got a nice little record going. I just want to keep adding names to my resume. We’ll see what happens.”
Watch the full UFC London post-fight press conference with Sean Brady above.
