Sunny Edwards: ‘Bam broke my face, half-blinded me, it’s a fight that will always be special to me’

When a fighter as brash, outspoken and, sometimes, relentless on social media as Sunny Edwards falls, there is often a crowd waiting to kick him.

Edwards has fallen out with plenty of people on socials, whether he’s known them or not. As defensively sound as he is in the boxing ring, there is a fair chance he’s blocked more people on X than punches in the ring.

But such was his fighting spirit in defeat against the excellent Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez, and the graciousness with which he accepted the loss, the queue lining up to put the boot in was not as long as anticipated.

For Edwards, while he was not sure he would ever get a comeuppance of sorts, he was always realistic enough to know that one day he might more than meet his match in the ring.

“Do you know what? I think one thing is I always accepted the idea that at some point that outcome might happen,” said the 28-year-old. 

“When I was coming up, I was always ready to jump in and go in with whoever they let me, really, but just walking into an arena in America with the biggest night of the week in world boxing going off, or that’s how it seemed to me, and walking in and seeing the show built around two young, undefeated world champions that event and that moment I hold so much gratitude for, because if you really asked me a few years ago, I don’t think something like that with me being in the main fight would have been possible. I’ll be real.”

Real for Sunny now is different to what real was for him a few years ago. In part, that is down to the persona he has created, the attention he has commanded, the victories he has earned. Even if he had seen all of that in his future, not everyone did.

“I came through being told by my promoter now, Eddie [Hearn], that if I wanted to box at light-flyweight I’d be boxing for £1,500, for a world title, and he might have been right. Especially at the time, and that’s genuinely where things kind of were at the lighter weight divisions. So to be a part of something that had the interest in certain corners that a big fight has, it’s something that will always be special to me. No, I don’t regret it [challenging Bam]. I don’t regret my effort in a boxing ring. What happened, what unfolded, my eye being a problem from the second round, I know I gave it my all and I proved a lot of things a lot of people didn’t know I had in me, with being able to take a beatdown against someone so good for so many rounds, and as he shows now, he hits you and he does really hurt ya.  

“I was half blind in one eye and not really being able to see the best fighter in the division and the division above, I was as very much in there as I could have been until I wasn’t, and I can hold my hands up that the better man won on the night and I don’t really think any less of myself.

“[But] it would be lying to say there weren’t questions I had to ask and answer myself [afterwards].” 

However, they have come at quiet times in Sunny’s life since, not the immediate aftermath. That was somewhat chaotic, but within six months Edwards had been back in the gym, been through another training camp and returned with victory over Adrian Curiel.

“I lost to Bam, had my face broken by him and I was in Saudi flying from America a couple of days later. I’d stopped in England and [was] in Saudi by Wednesday, there to support Lyndon [Arthur] when he was fighting [Dmitry] Bivol. I felt half responsible, because I was in conversations when he took the fight, so I thought, ‘I can’t not go over there.’ So I was there with all my bruises and my face barely intact a week later, so showing my face, I’m proud of me. I’m proud of me as a boxer. It’s probably the part of my life I’m most proud of, in the sense of, I’ve put the work in. I’ve done things people spend their whole lifetime trying to achieve. Will I ever enjoy it perhaps as much as I should? No, because I’ve got a high expectation of myself. So next I’m fighting Curiel, who’s only lost in a world title fight, but because Matchroom told me that he wasn’t good enough to fight a year ago, or however long ago the [Andres] Campas fight was [June 2023], I’m now scratching my head.

“He wasn’t good enough to fight me a year ago? Just because he’s somehow won a world title [since]. I wasn’t trying to put him down, it was probably just more of a realization of I spent my whole life chasing being a world champion, I become it, the fact I was winning and winning so easy, everyone had a problem with it, so I started fighting a little bit more and then everyone is more entertained and happy that I lost. And now I’m fighting a world champion who I don’t think ever should have been a world champion. I don’t mean that disrespectfully because he’s a good guy, tough fighter, but I’m talking about what I grew up thinking about what world champion level was.”

Taking on Galal Yafai at the Resorts World Arena in Birmingham on Saturday, Edwards has another big fight, and the biggest night domestically of his career. They know one another well. They boxed in the amateurs, have sparred, and they’ve always been respectful. Yafai is also an Olympic gold medallist but, at 31, needs a fast-track. Edwards is that bit of track. And Edwards is 28. He wants the big fights in his prime, when he’s at his best and when they mean the most. He and Yafai could have bickered and squabbled for three years and maybe sold more tickets, but it won’t mean as much on a sporting level as it will on Saturday.

“Any of these fights that get mentioned, I don’t want it to be, ‘Oh yeah, let me wait until I’m 32 years old. Next month’s not even promised, let alone that long. While I’m here, alive and kicking and healthy I’ll do it now, and on paper, somewhere is the best in the world,” Edwards continued. “If you look at The Ring [ratings] and care about anything they have to say. If not now, when? I’m not really about this, ‘Ah, the fight will be bigger later, let’s do this,’ because hopefully there’ll be a bigger fight later as well. I think it’s the only way that you can make your career, especially at these weights. You have to fight anyone that’s offered up to you.

“When I lost to Bam, there were talks about me and Matchroom and what we was doing next. They offered me Curiel and Galal, and I took them two fights. It was what the promoter wanted. I said, ‘Cool.’ It weren’t like I pitched, offered, or asked. It’s what they wanted. Here we are.”

Extending the theme of fight week, Edwards again spoke highly of his rival at yesterday’s final press conference. Even if smack talk had been required, Sunny offered not a peep.

“He’s a fantastic fighter,” Edwards admitted a week ago, via Zoom. “I realized that when he’d only been boxing about two years and he held me to a split decision in the ABA semi-finals and, to be honest, my arrogance thought I was just going to get in there and play with him, just because he’d only started a couple of years before. But he was older than me and he was stronger than me and I did win, I won the fight two rounds to one in my opinion, but he had me in the second round a bit like, ‘Bloody hell’ and I had to dig it out in the third round.

“He’s been good since then. Then we were on GB together. I’ve always felt comfortable, not comfortable in the sense it’s easy, but I’m not getting out the ring ever thinking I’ve been battered, but then again he’s probably not either.

“It’s good, competitive, high-level work of two fighters that don’t do or have anything else, really. We’ve shared rounds over the years and they’ve always been great, and I’m expecting more of the same. I’ve always spoke highly of Galal. If I’m being perfectly honest, and this isn’t to put him down, if history is anything as a teller I’ve always thought he doesn’t move his head enough for 12-round fights and I’ve always thought that if he’s stepping up to the levels I’ve been maybe he wouldn’t have the engine and toughness to fight the way he fights, without having more elusiveness about him.

“But, he’s very tough, he’s very strong. He’s very determined. He keeps throwing. He’s very arrogant with his work in the sense of, he doesn’t really consider what you’re doing, so he doesn’t buy into feints too much, he doesn’t really get mis-steped, because he’s already stepped in and thrown. But at the same time, I think that leaves him wide open for well-timed and easier-to-find counter shots. So I think it’s going to be a great fight. I think it’s going to be a busy fight. But at the same time, I believe that even though Curiel is a former world champion and had more fights than Galal, I think this is a much tougher and higher-level fight, for sure.”

One cannot be sure if the old Sunny Edwards, the take-no-prisoners character on social media, is all grown up. Whether he has left that somewhat churlish image behind now he’s a manager and has his own young fighters coming through and looking up to him. Maybe the Rodriguez fight was a humbling. 

Whatever, on Saturday night at around 10pm the flattery and mutual respect will stop for a while and it will be down to Edwards’ gifted fists to do the talking.