UFC 278 caps an entertaining week with an unbelievable finish, as Edwards stuns Usman — and the world

In the lead-up to Saturday’s UFC 278 pay-per-view at Vivint Arena, welterweight title challenger Leon Edwards expressed some mild disappointment at his long-awaited championship chance coming in Salt Lake City.

“When you’re a kid, you picture [winning] your first UFC title somewhere massive … somewhere dramatic,” he told me.

You’d be hard-pressed to come up with a more massive or dramatic finish than what happened Saturday night, though.

Just 56 seconds away from what was going to be a lackluster, unanimous-decision defeat, Edwards instead shocked himself, shocked Usman, shocked everyone within Vivint Arena, and shocked the whole of the mixed martial arts world by delivering a perfectly placed head kick, instantly knocking out the reigning champ and No. 1 pound-for-pound fighter in the world, and changing his career trajectory and the UFC landscape.

“Look at me now! Look at me now!” a simultaneously joyful and tearful Edwards screamed in the middle of the Octagon, as the reality of what he’d done set in.

That finish, though, was just the proverbial cherry on top to what proved to be an entertaining fight week, an absolutely electric fight night … and the perfect follow-up to the UFC’s previous foray into Utah — a much-maligned and sparsely attended event held almost six years to the day prior.

Here are some of the highlights from covering UFC 278.

Weird and wild moments from the undercard

• Intense early: I’ve been a fight fan for years, so when UFC 278 was still only rumored to be coming to Salt Lake City, I made my case to be the one to cover it. Turns out I had zero competition, but whatever. I made it a point to be there from the outset, to watch every fight from the first early prelim to the main event. I was in the building by 3:30, and in my seat — which, to my utter disbelief, was front row next to the Octagon, right behind what would be the “blue corner” — by 4.

Local fight fans apparently were of a similar mindset, and showed up in strength early. During Wednesday’s “Media Day” session, Aussie light heavyweight Tyson Pedro noted that his countrymen tended to be there from the beginning, whereas American audiences typically don’t filter in until just before the main card. He hoped SLC would be different. It was. Every fighter got to perform in front of a full-throated audience.

• Making new friends: Before the action began, ring announcer Bruce Buffer — known for his intensely dramatic introductions and his sparkly suit coats — came by the media table and gave me a fist-bump. A little while later, referee Mike Beltran — known for the juxtaposition of his bald head against his long, braided, fu manchu mustache — did some stretches in front of me, telling me he was worried about pulling a hamstring, then offered me a handshake before he got to work. I must be legit UFC media now.

• The first controversy: The second fight of the evening saw Mongolia’s Aoriqileng defeat New Englander Jay Perrin by unanimous decision, 29-28 on all three score cards. And the Viv crowd was heated, booing lustily (though you could argue they were biased what with the constant “U-S-A!” chants throughout). I personally felt Perrin controlled two of the three rounds, and should have won, but it was close, and certainly not the highway robbery it was portrayed as.

• The craziest back-and-forth of the night: Part of the appeal of MMA is that you can see one guy dominating, his opponent on the verge of going out, only for the momentum to change just like that. Welterweights AJ Fletcher and Ange Loosa are far from household names, but their second round was one of the most ridiculous back-and-forth displays of brutality I’ve ever seen.

• The only real controversy of the night: Featherweight Luis Saldaña should have had an easy win over opponent Sean Woodson. He might have had a first-round knockout or TKO, but he showboated after a knockdown, allowing Woodson to recover. After later knocking Woodson down again, Saldaña committed one of the most egregious illegal strikes I’ve ever seen, kneeing his downed opponent in the head, which is against the rules. The fight could have been stopped (and White said it should have been). Instead, Woodson wanted to continue, and Saldaña was penalized a point. The fight saw one judge score it for Saldaña, another for Woodson, and the third had it a tie, as a result of that penalized point. So Saldaña cost himself an easy win and earned the boss’s ire.

The really important takeaway from that fight, though? Sean Woodson looks like former NBA player Tayshaun Prince — but a foot shorter and 100 pounds lighter.

• A fighter asks my opinion: The penultimate prelim fight saw Brazil’s Leonardo Santos take on New Yorker Jared Gordon (who’s got an incredible story about being sexually abused as a child, and overcoming a substance abuse problem later). The first round was entertaining. The second and third, though, were veeeery slow, with lots of grappling and not much action, causing the crowd to boo. Gordon won a unanimous 30-27 decision.

Here’s the amazing part, though. As fighters exit the cage, their path back to the locker room took them in front of the media row where I was sitting. All night long, people were coming by to chat up the guy next to me, John Morgan, the editor in chief of MMA website “The Underground,” and a contributor now for Sports Illustrated, who has been covering the UFC for 16 years and is the guy asking the initial questions at every UFC media availability. So as Gordon was walking toward us and slowed a bit, I figured he was just going share some quick thoughts with Morgan. Instead, he paused in front of me, and in reaction to the crowd reaction, asked me, “Was it boring? Was it boring?” Figuring honesty was the best policy, I replied either (can’t remember which) “Kind of” or “A little bit,” much to the shock and amusement of the other media members around me.

A main card to remember

• Pedro vs. Hunsucker: The aforementioned Tyson Pedro (who has such a cool comeback story after missing almost four years due to a knee injury) opened the big proceedings and made quick work of Harry Hunsucker, putting him down with a front kick to the abdomen, then finishing him off with ground and pound, getting the TKO in just 1:05 of action.

As Pedro was rightly celebrating his latest amazing comeback victory, I couldn’t help but notice Hunsucker leaving the Octagon, then stopping and sitting down on the bottom step, crushed and dejected. Sometimes the real brutality of this sport isn’t getting punched in the face or kicked in the head or twisted up into a human pretzel, but seeing months of training and preparation completely undone in 65 seconds

• Wu vs. Pudilova: Late in the week, this fight was bumped from the prelims to the main card as a way to showcase some of the UFC’s women (even if these two came in with sub-.500 UFC records). Lucie Pudilova of the Czech Republic (and in her first UFC fight since 2020) beat China’s Wu Yanan by TKO at the 4:04 mark of round 2, and was exultant afterwards: “I can’t believe I’m back in the UFC!”

• Aldo vs. Dvalishvili: Few fighters got as much love from SLC this week as the Brazilian legend Jose Aldo. The crowd absolutely lost it as he made his entrance to the Jay-Z/Kanye/Rihanna anthem “Run This Town.” That was about the highlight of his bantamweight contender bout against Merab Dvalishvili, though. Aldo’s takedown defense was exceptional, but he’s slowed considerably, and White would later bemoan that the ex-champ had “zero offense” Saturday. Dvalishvili controlled the action with pace and aggression to win a unanimous 29-28, 29-28, 30-27 decision, but White was similarly unimpressed with his efforts afterward, saying he was too passive to be considered title material for now.

• Costa vs. Rockhold: The co-main event had some potential for real fireworks, given that there seemed to be a bit of genuine bad blood between Luke Rockhold and Paulo Costa all week. And while White wound up awarding the bout “Fight of the Night” … it honestly was mostly a dud. Costa won by unanimous decision, 30-27 on all three cards. Rockhold is 37, and was fighting for the first time in three years — and it showed, as he was totally gassed after the first round, often putting his hands on his knees during the action. Costa, meanwhile, who has a reputation for being a knockout artist, also seemed to lack energy throughout, and wasn’t doing much to press the action.

All in all, it was a really weird fight. After long spells of cautious approaches and inactivity, they’d occasionally thrill the crowd with some periodic swings for the fences. Arguably the biggest highlight came when the busted-up Rockhold reversed position on the ground at the end, and intentionally smeared his blood all over Costa’s face — a move that the Brazilian would later call “weird” and “disgusting.” Afterward, Rockhold took his gloves off in the ring, and told analyst Joe Rogan, “I’m f---ing old.” On his way out, he got hugged by longtime American Kickboxing Academy teammate turned commentator Daniel Cormier.

• Usman vs. Edwards: It wasn’t always the most stylistically captivating, given the frequent wrestling and body control along the cage that pervaded. Still, while Leon Edwards won the first round by virtue of becoming the first fighter to score a takedown of Kamaru Usman in the UFC, the latter soon showed why he’d come in with 15 straight UFC wins and five welterweight title defenses.

Usman was in total control in rounds 2, 3, and 4, and Edwards was doing virtually nothing in round 5 to change what was looking like an inevitable outcome. ESPN.com’s Marc Raimondi, sitting on the other side of me, had his story ready to go about Usman defending the belt. And then, with 56 seconds left in the fight, Edwards threw a punch, got Usman to lean to his right, and in that moment the Jamaican-turned-Brit snapped off a high kick with his left leg that caught Usman flush against the side of the head, knocking him out instantly and sending him crashing to the canvas, stiff as a board.

“It’s what makes this sport the greatest sport in the world — that you can sit through four rounds and 4 minutes and that can happen in a fight,” White said afterward. “Anything is possible in this sport.”

Edwards, who grew up in a wood house with a metal roof in Kingston, Jamaica, found it difficult to put into words what winning the belt meant to him.

“He’s been a long[time] champion, he said he’s the pound-for-pound best all week, and he believed it. But as I said in the Octagon, ‘The belt belongs to nobody.’ No man is meant to hold it for that long,” Edwards said. “And as I said all week, I felt like this is my moment.”

Come back soon?

Didn’t get to go to UFC 278 but hoping to attend an event in the future? It appears you won’t have to wait another six years for the organization to return.

White said in a meeting with local media on Thursday that he’s eager to go any place where “it’s easy to do business,” and confirmed Utah is such a place. When I asked him what that meant, he initially deflected. When I persisted, he finally spelled it out: “There are places that are still COVID testing. You won’t see me there.”

So there’s that.

As for Saturday, he was thrilled with the sold-out crowd of 18,321, and the Vivint Arena record for a live gate receipt — $4,297,655.42.

“The crowd was incredible tonight — you could put this crowd up there with anybody,” White said afterward. “These guys were fired up, they were into it. The arena was like 60% full for the first fight of the night. I mean, this is as good as it gets.”

Later asked what that meant for UFC coming back, he replied, “Probably next year.”