Fight OddsThe Ultimate Fighting Championship stops in England at least once a year, and the Octagon's first trip to London in 2025 features a solid card. The top two fights are both well-matched bouts between former champions and rising contenders; Leon Edwards, fresh off dropping his welterweight title, gets Sean Brady in the UFC Fight Night 255 headliner, while former light heavyweight champ Jan Blachowicz takes on rising contender Carlos Ulberg. Gunnar Nelson returns from a long layoff to lock horns with Kevin Holland in a bout that should be interesting, fan favorite Molly McCann confronts an intriguing newcomer in Alexia Thainara, and two more fun contests round out the main card: Jordan Vucenic and Chris Duncan are matched for action at lightweight, while Nathaniel Wood takes on Morgan Charriere in a duel between featherweights poised to make a run.
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Welterweights
Leon Edwards (22-4, 1 N/C) vs. Sean Brady (17-1)Odds: Brady (-162), Edwards (+136)
Where does Edwards go from here? The Jamaican Brit came to the UFC in 2014 with a solid amount of hype but got off to a rough start with two losses in his first four fights - though those defeats coming against Claudio Silva and Kamaru Usman meant that those results aged quite well. But it did prompt "Rocky" to change things up a bit; initially advertised as an explosive striker, Edwards reinvented himself as a more patient fighter that looked to slow things down and could get a lot of things done in the clinch. It was a highly-successful approach -- Edwards would go undefeated in 13 fights before suffering his next loss -- but not a particularly exciting one, which meant that Edwards would take the slow path to relevancy. The Englishman would wind up as a mainstay of the UFC's European cards, stringing together workmanlike wins that went under the radar until he finally earned his first main event, taking on Donald Cerrone in Singapore back in 2018. That became the start of what would wind up as a running thread of Edwards getting overshadowed despite his own success; it was another solid but unspectacular decision win for Edwards, and the narrative afterwards centered almost entirely around Cerrone falling ill before the fight and putting on a game performance in a loss. A rivalry with Jorge Masvidal briefly looked like the spark that might bring Edwards to a new promotional level; instead, Masvidal's career caught fire to the point that a fight with Edwards no longer made sense, and Edwards eventually wound up the forgotten man of the division as the pandemic left him stranded in England. But somehow, Edwards would find himself in a prominent fight against Nate Diaz shortly after his return -- which once again followed the narrative of Edwards scoring the victory but not the headlines, as most of the talk centered around Diaz's late success in what was otherwise clear one-way traffic for Edwards. Edwards once again seemed to be stuck -- and was indeed out of action for over a year after the Diaz fight -- until he was suddenly deemed the best available option for welterweight champion Usman, who was in the process of clearing out the division with his dominance. And for once in his career, Edwards flipped the script; after Usman had seemingly turned the corner and had a decision win well in hand, Edwards unleashed a head kick knockout in the last minute of the fifth round to finally cash in on years of hard work. That moment will remain the highlight of Edwards's career, with his subsequent trilogy fight with Usman shortly behind; that fight didn't have one singular moment of glory, but was instead the most locked in performance of Edwards's career, as he looked sharp, countered Usman and walked away with the decision victory. But from there, Edwards reverted to his old form, doing enough to get by and letting his opponent into the fight more than he needed to; he had an uninspiring title defense against a shot-looking version of Colby Covington, then simply got outworked and out-wrestled to lose his title to Belal Muhammad this past July.
Brady's the next man up, and despite Edwards somehow still only being 33 years old and being the A-side of this bout, he could really use an impressive performance on home soil to stay relevant. Brady had little left to prove on the regional scene ahead of his 2019 UFC debut, but there was some worry as to how the Philadelphian's game would translate up a level; a slow-building grinder, Brady simply might run out of time to turn the corner in 15-minute fights against better competition. But as it turns out, Brady is an absolute ox that's had little trouble playing bully as needed; his striking game is still clearly somewhere between a work in progress and a means to an end, but he's been able to overpower opponent after opponent even when he's had a rough start. The lone exception to that is Muhammad, who was able to gameplan around Brady and pick him apart on the feet, but Brady has thankfully rebounded to put together what might be the two best performances of his career; he overpowered and tapped out Kelvin Gastelum, who rarely gets outwrestled, and managed to get a five-round win over the finish line against Gilbert Burns, staying aggressive and showing the ability to fight through exhaustion. The fact that Brady does still tire is probably the main worry here, since Edwards has definitively shown that he can be dangerous for five rounds provided he looks to pull the trigger, but this does look like a poor matchup for the former welterweight champion; Edwards loves to play neutralizer but Brady will likely refuse to be neutralized, and the clinch doesn't seem like much of a safety valve for Edwards given Brady's physical strength. The ideal version of Edwards could probably get a lot of work done on the feet here, but that edition of Edwards rarely comes out; the pick is Brady via decision.
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Edwards vs. Brady
Blachowicz vs. Ulberg
Nelson vs. Holland
McCann vs. Thainara
Vucenic vs. Duncan
Wood vs. Charriere
The Prelims
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