Leon Edwards & Gilbert Burns: Contextualizing the Welterweight War of Words
Social media battles never give you all the information, but making sure fans and observers have the opportunity to see the facts and understand the full context of the situation is crucial
Over the last 36 hours or so, welterweight contenders Gilbert Burns and Leon Edwards have engaged in a transatlantic back-and-forth centered around Edwards’ position in the championship hierarchy and Burns’ desire to work his way to another title shot, ideally at the expense of the talented British standout.
Mike Bohn at MMA Junkie put together the timeline if you want to take a look at how things started, where they went, and where they stand now, and several others offered “raised eyebrow” emojis and various other quote tweets regarding the escalating war of words, but there have been no real attempts to contextualize things, so I wanted to try and do so because just sharing the trash talk leaves out a great deal of vital information.
I know I say it a lot here (and on Twitter), but I harp on it because I genuinely believe that context is key and when situations like this occur, it’s imperative to lay out the facts and present things in full, and not in part, because otherwise it just becomes a “He Said / He Said” with a great deal of important information missing.
Let’s get into it, shall we?
Let me start by saying I appreciate what Gilbert Burns is trying to do — picking a fight with the presumed next man in line, hoping to secure a fight, beat him, and vault right back into a championship opportunity of his own. It’s a wise strategy, and cranking up the insults and NSFW language have certainly help these social media shots gain more attention.
With that established, a great deal of what Burns said about Edwards and his resume was either factually incorrect, lacked full context, or was the kind of completely useless MMA math that everyone usually dismisses without batting an eye. Unfortunately, when a fighter says it, sometimes there is a disconnect that occurs and folks can’t help themselves but get fired up by the “you struggled with this guy and I smashed him” false equivalencies. They include:
Your best win is Nate Diaz: Edwards’ best win is his five-round victory over Rafael Dos Anjos in July 2019, when the former lightweight champ was the guy you needed to beat in order to secure a championship opportunity. He was two fights removed from challenging for the interim title and coming off a win over Kevin Lee, and it was the Birmingham native’s eighth straight victory.
I beat legends in Woodley, Maia, and WB: First, all due respect to those gentlemen, but there isn’t a legend in the bunch; there is a former champ and twin two-time title challengers, all of whom are excellent fighters and divisional stalwarts. But legends? Secondly, the only reason Burns fought Woodley is because Edwards’ fight with “The Chosen One” in London was scuttled by the global coronavirus pandemic, otherwise it would have been the Brit handing Woodley his second consecutive loss and not Burns.
Nate beat you; I’ll bury you: Nate got whooped for 24 minutes, then landed one great shot, admired it, and failed to seal the deal. How things would play out between these two remains undetermined.
The bulk of the Gunnar Nelson tweet: Edwards out-grappled Nelson for much of the fight and when Nelson got mount in the final minute, Edwards tried to tie him up, which is the right thing to do. Both men won by decision, and Burns fought Nelson in Copenhagen, Denmark, not his native Iceland.
No one has said any of this because why bother fact-checking or correcting a bunch of trash talk that is getting people hyped, right? The problem with just letting it fly as is though is that there are a lot of people that won’t bother to figure out if everything Burns is saying is correct and will instead take it as gospel, and when it then gets packaged together in a tick-tock of the events on major MMA platforms or retweeted by countless writers and journalists covering the sport without any kind of clarifications, it leads people to believe that what is being said is true and paints an incomplete and inaccurate picture of things.
To be clear: I don’t expect Burns to present things in an even fashion; he’s trying to make his case and presenting a skewed version of events that attempts to attack Edwards’ ego and gin up interest on social media is the best way to accomplish that task. But it would be great if members of the media clarified things a little while clicking that re-tweet button or assembling the collection of tweets for a blow-by-blow of what was said.
Here’s another perfect example of why context matters:
The above information certainly does paint an interesting picture, but it also leaves out a great deal of important information that contextualizes those numbers and gives some greater clarity and understanding to how and why Edwards has half as many fights as Burns.
Item No. 1: Edwards was sidelined for 20 months in the middle of the 36-month sample window, through no fault of his own.
After beating Donald Cerrone just prior to the start of this three-year stretch, he beat Nelson in London and Dos Anjos in San Antonio, Texas, and then waited for the championship opportunity that had come to each of the last two men that toppled the Brazilian veteran, Kamaru Usman and Colby Covington. When a title fight didn’t materialize, he accepted a fight with former champ Tyron Woodley, who went on to become the new dos Anjos, only to have that entire event get scrapped.
When the UFC re-started last spring, Edwards was unable to travel to the United States to compete, and once he was finally booked again, it was against Khamzat Chimeav for the end of the year, but the bout never materialized after each man was forced to withdraw once after contracting COVID and the fight being postponed multiple times.
Item No. 2: Burns capitalized on two short notice opportunities
People seem to forget that Burns’ run at welterweight started as a bit of a “sure, why not?” deal when he stepped in and stepped up to face Alexey Kunchenko on short notice in Montevideo, Uruguay. He’d bounced back from a loss to Dan Hooker with two good, but nothing great wins at lightweight, then handed Kunchenko his first career loss in an upset, kicking off his move to welterweight. His fight with Nelson in Denmark was a short notice appearance as well, with Burns stepping in for Thiago Alves.
He was fortunate to compete on the final event before COVID shut things down for several weeks, and then landed the Woodley bout because Edwards wasn’t able to travel to Las Vegas. This year, they’ve each competed twice: Burns in February and July, Edwards in March and June.
Item No. 3: Edwards is unbeaten in the last five-plus years
Edwards’ three-year run doesn’t look as good as what Burns and Luque have managed during that time, but if we stretch it back to the start of 2016, things look different:
Colby: 8-1
Edwards: 9-0 (1 NC)
Burns: 10-3
Luque: 13-2
Thompson: 5-4-1
Edwards still has the fewest wins of the three men currently jockeying for the next championship opportunity, but he’s also the only one without a loss, and one of his victories came against Luque, who also lost to Thompson less than two years ago.
Combined that with the knowledge that he missed nearly two full years towards the end of that run, but has most looked really good since returning, and he goes from being the least active fighter on a list that is tailored to highlight the success the Brazilians have enjoyed to a guy that hasn’t suffered a loss in more than five years in one of the deepest, most competitive divisions in the UFC.
Item No. 4: Who you beat is sometimes more important than how many wins you’ve accrued
Keeping this just to the triumvirate currently jockeying for position for the next title shot, here’s who those three men fought during the three-year window referenced in the tweet:
Edwards: Nelson, Dos Anjos, Belal Muhammad (NC), Nathan Diaz
Burns: Olivier Aubin-Mercier, Mike Davis, Alexey Kunchenko, Gunnar Nelson, Demian Maia, Tyron Woodley, Usman (L), Thompson
Luque: Jalin Turner, Bryan Barberena, Derrick Krantz, Mike Perry, Thompson (L), Niko Price, Randy Brown, Woodley, Michael Chiesa
The irony of arguing for Burns or Luque in this case because of the volume of work they’ve put in and the overall winning percentage they’ve amassed during that stretch is that Edwards is unbeaten, fought superior competition overall, and has an even better list of vanquished opponents during his current 10-fight unbeaten streak than either man. The thing that puts him behind those two, even from a perception standpoint here, is the three-year window because, as noted above, if you stretch it out a couple more years, his case for being the next title contender looks even stronger.
The reason this type of stuff irks me so much is because in a landscape that is increasingly focused on hot takes, bold statements, and gross overreactions, I’m more of a “examine all sides, look at all the information” kind of guy and there is less and less space for fleshed out featured, nuanced discussions, and measured reactions that aren’t swayed by the consensus opinion or the heat of the moment.
I feel for guys like Edwards and have been championing his case for bigger and better opportunities for years because he feels like my fighting avatar — a guy that just wants to handle his business, put up positive results, and get the opportunities his work traditionally merits, only to frequently be left behind or lapped by louder voices and told he needs to do more.
But this quest for greater context and nuance in the way we discuss these things isn’t anything new for me, nor does it hinge exclusively on the quiet standout from Birmingham I’ve been riding for these last several years.
Here’s an excerpt from a piece I wrote last summer, when everyone was blown away by the debut efforts of Mounir Lazzez and Khamzat Chimaev on Fight Island that has since been lost to the Internet because the platform I was one was terrible and I didn’t back up all the links; I can post the full column here or send it to you via email if anyone wants to read the whole thing:
Dominant performances are obviously going to slip everyone’s mind from time-to-time, but that’s why immediately trying to determine where Chimaev beating the bejesus out of Phillips fits in the pantheon of all-time dominant debuts feels hurried and misguided.
Plus, it’s John Phillips, a fighter that no one held in lofty regard before he landed on the business end of a beat-down on Wednesday, but now is being cast as a notable name in the middleweight division in order to give further import to what Chimaev accomplished.
No one was rushing to fawn over Charles Byrd when he submitted Phillips in the first round of their joint UFC debuts a little more than two years ago, nor were the wins of Kevin Holland or Jack Marshman considered crucial triumphs in their respective careers when they too bested Phillips.
While none were as lopsided as the effort Chimaev put forth on Wednesday, Phillips’ track record and standing in the division ought to be considered and factored into things when lauding the efforts of the Swedish newcomer.
This isn’t specific to Chimaev and Phillips or newcomers in general either — it happens all the damn time.
Some fighter with a bit of buzz who is getting hyped up on the broadcast turns in an impressive effort and all of a sudden the person they beat gets a 10-15% increase in standing and abilities from the MMA community as a whole because it works to further the narrative they’re pushing, even though that wasn’t the case at previous points in their careers.
Luque looked great last weekend and the way he laced up that finish on Michael Chiesa was masterful, but should it be enough to vault him ahead of a guy that beat him in a head-to-head matchup earlier in their careers and still hasn’t lost since?
And if we’re going to play they, “Yeah, but who has Edwards beaten?” game and question his resume, I’m sorry, but Edwards beating Rafael Dos Anjos when he did is a greater achievement than Luque beating Chiesa last weekend, or Woodley in his previous bout, and it’s not particularly close, either. And miss me with the “that was two years ago, bruh” garbage because — and I’ve written about this before too — it’s real interest and real convenient how some wins hold value for eternity and others depreciate at an alarming rate, depending on who earned them and what arguments are being made.
We can’t hold Nathan Diaz out as this crucial matchup that Edwards needs to take in order to become a bigger name and show he really belongs in the title conversation, only to turn around and say Edwards still needs to do more because he only won 24 minutes of the 25-minute fight and Diaz hasn’t beaten anyone of substance at welterweight in his entire career.
You don’t get to play both sides of it.
I mean, I guess you can, but you shouldn’t if you don’t want to come off as real suspect and like someone always looking to argue the most popular and consensus opinions in the space all the time.
I believe if quite literally anyone with a little bit of social media buzz or favorite status within the media went on the kind of streak Edwards is on right now, no one would be entertaining the idea that he still needs to do more — that he should fight Jorge Masvidal or needs to beat Burns — because everyone knows how difficult it is to go unbeaten in 10 fights in the welterweight division, especially when half of those contests are coming against Top 15 fighters.
But because Edwards is unassuming, because Diaz landed one shot and everyone loves him, because Luque just looked incredible, and because Burns is making all kinds of noise, no one wants to come out and present the full context of this situation and tell everyone to settle down and stop talking all crazy because the discourse drives traffic, Burns flexing his Twitter muscles is fun to watch and engage with (and makes for easy content), and who could possibly want all the information on a subject when there is hype and buzz and social media traction to consider?
Mark Twain said, “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story,” and while the MMA world hasn’t fully embraced that approach, it does feel like we’ve shifted to a place where just sharing what someone has said (or tweeted), presenting one side of the story, or only a part of the information is the norm these days.
After all, who needs full context when the easy, free content is just so tasty on its own, right?