UFC legend Rashad Evans has explained the feeling he had watching Kamaru Usman get knocked out at UFC 278.
Last Saturday night in Utah, Leon Edwards pulled off a minor miracle as he knocked Kamaru Usman out cold in the main event of UFC 278 to capture the UFC welterweight championship.
The win came via head-kick in the fifth round and sent shockwaves through the mixed martial arts world, to put it lightly.
While Edwards was off celebrating the biggest win of his career, Usman was left to lick his wounds and reflect on a loss that ended his hopes of tying Anderson Silva’s 16-fight unbeaten streak in the UFC.
Many of Kamaru’s close friends and family were in attendance to see him compete, and that includes Rashad Evans.
The former UFC light heavyweight champion became close with ‘The Nigerian Nightmare’ during their time together at Blackzilians and during an appearance on Morning Kombat, he spoke candidly about how it felt to see Usman fall to such a nasty defeat.
“Just being there was unbelievable, because I’m sitting right next to his family, and his daughter’s right next to me,” Evans said. “When that whole thing happens, you just hear this scream, and it was just kind of very traumatic. For me, being like a brother to Kamaru, just watching him go down like that, it just made me real sick.”
“I didn’t think he was gonna lose, but sometimes you have – like when your friend or your family is fighting – you have an uneasy feeling,” Evans said. “And I had an uneasy feeling that I couldn’t shake. When that kick happened, those worst feelings, those worst things, those worst thoughts were just realized in an instant. It was devastating.”
The comeback
They say that the comeback is stronger than the setback and over the course of the next few months, we’re going to see if that mentality pays off for Kamaru Usman.
The former king is aiming to run it back with Edwards in a trilogy bout and given how it all went down at the weekend, it’s not hard to see this being one of the biggest fights in the recent history of the UFC.