UFC’s Leon Edwards: ‘In Jamaica killing seemed normal. We were used to death all around us’

Leon Edwards says of Colby Covington: ‘This is his third title shot and will be the final one. He talks a lot of trash.’ Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian

Leon Edwards laughs as he remembers how, seven years ago, he and a friend used to practise his interview technique at home in Birmingham. “I was terrible at interviews,” the UFC welterweight champion admits as his traumatic life, blighted by the murder of his father and his immersion in gangland strife as a teenager, had left him sounding broken and stilted.

“I was so nervous I’d be giving one-word answers,” Edwards says with an amused grimace as he gets ready to defend his title against Colby Covington in Las Vegas on Saturday night. “That’s all I could do then.”