Sunny Edwards announced his retirement, at the age of 28, in November after being stopped by Galal Yafai. He had previously been recognized as the world’s leading flyweight, having lost only to Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez in 2023, and intends on remaining involved in his profession in potentially as many as three different roles.
He revisited what could prove to be his final fight and the significant decisions he has recently made, discussing his future with BoxingScene.
BoxingScene: How do you reflect on the fight with Galal Yafai?
Edwards: I’m a bit deflated; a bit disappointed. I knew going into the fight that my body weren’t, maybe for a few years now, what I wanted it to be [and was] getting progressively worse, but I still promised myself. … I know I keep saying it, but I put such an importance on trying to paint a good picture of the flyweight division and making big fights and events that people are genuinely interested in. I did genuinely have belief that things were going to click into place – I needed them to – but that just never really happened. I didn’t show up at the races and I was trying to dig myself out of a hole from pretty much the first shot he threw.
But, look, no regrets. I’ve had a great career. I’ve given 20 years of my life competing, traveling around the world, giving my best. I haven’t had a season off. I’ve competed every single year since 11 years old. It’s sad, and it’s probably the hardest thing to accept, but I felt, most, relieved when the circus was done. After a loss, that mindset showed and told me everything I needed to know. I don’t think I’ve made the wrong decision.
BS: Do you stand by announcing your retirement?
Edwards: Win, lose or draw, I was doing that. Genuinely. My body and my mind just needs a rest from the getting ready and competing, and that desire and that cliche – that eye of the tiger that I once had – for whatever reason, unbeknown to myself, really, it just don’t seem in me the same way. When you haven’t got that fire, then a boxing ring’s not the best place for you. So how good I am, and can be, and have been, I owe it to myself to not keep getting in the ring. It’s hard to accept yourself, knowing you’re not as good as you used to be.
I’m not close-minded to anything in this world. However, I’ve got a high standard of myself, a high standard of what I’ve been capable of doing, and if I’m honest, I’ve been short of that for quite a little while now. I’ve managed to hide it better than people have really noticed – both close to me and boxing fans. I don’t know if I’ll ever compete again, because there’s other stuff involved in the sport, and involved in my life, that I really do enjoy doing. I find myself getting more emotion and more feeling on some other things now than in the boxing ring. For the most part of my life – for over half of it – there wasn’t a single thing in boxing, outside of being in a boxing ring, that did that for me. So I don’t know. It’s not like I’m close-minded to [returning]. My main focus, really, is working on my health, working on myself, setting some foundations and leveraging my boxing career the best I can with what opportunities and possibilities I have around me.
There was getting to points in the last 12 months, I was genuinely thinking that I could be getting more done and making more moves and covering more ground if I wasn’t having to stop for 10, 12 weeks to prepare for a fight – and I don’t think that was the best mindset. Maybe I did it to myself, but one of the big pushes for getting into management, getting into commentary early, getting my trainer’s license and helping alongside fighters’ corners, I didn’t know how long my body would keep this up for. I’ve been suffering with injuries and fighting with them and getting injections in parts of my body – pain-numbing so I can fight – and ankles going. … Just a lot, really. It started really getting a lot. I hurt from every single corner in this camp, throughout it. That weighed on me more than it ever has before.
But no excuses. I didn’t want to take anything away from Galal – win, lose or draw, I was getting out of the ring. Following a win, [there was] maybe much more chance that at some point I’d return. But after that performance, I felt almost like I was in someone else’s body.
BS: How do you reflect on what you were heard saying at the end of the second round?
Edwards: Do you know what’s crazy? I did try and see a mic. I didn’t think I was live on broadcast, if I’m perfectly honest, because normally there’s a little flashing mic that’s poking down. I didn’t think it was there, but it was more just an actual conversation response to my coach. We’re good friends, me and Chris, and he was trying to speak to me, and he didn’t understand why I weren’t responding, and I just told him the truth. I don’t know why, but the desire and the ego I fought with for so long, trying to be perfect in a boxing ring – for some reason, it just weren’t inside me. And I’m just thinking, deep down, with the last 10, 11 weeks – the thought processes that have been going through my head – deep down, I knew this. But I hadn’t admitted it or accepted it or said it to anyone. So it was more just a conversation with Chris. But it weren’t, “Chris, can you get me out of the ring?” I weren’t looking for a way out. I was just being honest. When he was telling me all of these instructions – all passionate – “Oh, Chris, I’m just here having a fight, man.” I want to give another big props to Chris Williams, because his speech he gave me – he found what was inside of me.
I was blocking most of the shots; I didn’t feel like I was hurt; I didn’t feel like I was nearly going down, either. I was thinking, “He’s going to be tired in a minute,” you know what I mean? And then the fight got waved off. I’ve never really been in that position. I don’t think I was hurt as much as the ref maybe thought. But the ref was looking out for me and stopped the fight. At that point, I thought I was in the fight and it got taken away, but I knew deep down. My body – I just don’t have the confidence or the faith in the strength of my body, and that’s not a good mindset, especially when I know how strong Galal is. Me and Galal have always been very, very well-matched and have great, competitive fights and spars, and even he knew himself, deep down, that that wasn’t me in there in any shape or form that he’s seen me before. I was trying to give myself the best opportunity, and I was trying to get the training in that I could. Not to try and make excuses, but there were two occasions when my ankles went and I had to have weeks off training. Five weeks out, I had to have a week out of sparring, a week out of training and then do my last week of sparring after that with the ankle injury. Not to make excuses, but it was really getting to the point where my body was falling apart. “I’m not even getting a good week in a camp now.” It was just a bit of a chore.
BS: How much did your performance against Yafai owe to your defeat against Jesse Rodriguez?
Edwards: I’m not sure if it’s just the Rodriguez fight. I think there were signs in other fights before, but I’ve been trying my best. My body just doesn’t keep up the demand that I try and put it through. I end up really tailoring down the amount of training I do because I can’t physically keep up with the real schedule. My training’s whittled down from four or five years ago, from training two or three times every day through the week and a run on Saturday – Sunday, day off – to training once a day. It really has whittled down. Maybe, yeah, some of it – the desire – is maybe not as high to prepare the same way that I used to, but a lot of parts are played in that. I do all of these sessions. Something’s really hurting, and then the next day’s something’s usually affected, and I spent years trying to train through it to the point … when one part stops hurting, it’s because another part started hurting. That’s genuinely how I feel like my body is.
BS: Does criticism of your performance do Yafai a disservice?
Edwards: Yeah, of course. And he’s a very good fighter, but I said he was a very good fighter before, and I expected a hard fight regardless – even if the best Sunny turned up. I’ve seen a point where he said, “It feels like it tainted my win.” Never was that my intention. I want to give him every bit of praise. I tried giving him every bit of respect, and I asked the WBC supervisor if he minded if I passed him his belt. Galal’s a friend of a long time. We had to have the fight; it was always going to come. We are just the best at what we do in our country. I still felt like I owed it. I felt like getting in the ring regardless, even when the injury was going, I owed to the division. I owed it to myself. I owed it to Galal, the story. All of that means a lot to me, and it’s probably why you saw a fighter that really enjoyed the ring walk and going to the ring, because I still love the whole process of boxing. The show aspect, the entertainment, fans feeling something.
Even if on my biggest nights I weren’t the one celebrating, making a sporting event that fight fans buy into and it spreads across the country and the world – that was always a dream for me. In the flyweight division, I didn’t really think it was possible when I was first coming through. I still genuinely did enjoy it. I just was hoping that when I got in the ring, Sunny from two years ago would turn up, rather than the one in sparring for the last 10 weeks. That was my only thought process, because I knew where I was in my head. I’d already told people close to me that I’m retiring. I didn’t mean to take it away from him. It was more, if it was a torch-bearing moment, then that’s what it’s going to be, and that’s what it ended up being. I didn’t want to take or taint it or whatever. I think you can see from the very first moment that that’s not a version of me you’ve ever seen in the ring before. They can argue and they can say that it was just because of Galal’s pressure and presence, and I’ll be more than happy to accept that. I’m retired. I don’t have no horse in no races no more. It is what it is. I knew I was retiring after. I’ve put a lot into my career and been involved in eight or nine headlines. I’ve fought in America. I’ve fought in London. I’ve fought in the UK. I’ve fought in Sheffield. I’ve fought in Birmingham. I didn’t expect so early to get to a point in my mindset where, as far as boxing competing goes, I’ve done enough now, and I feel like I’ve got to that point.
BS: How influential was your split from Grant Smith?
Edwards: I guess we’ll never know. One thing about me, if I was going out, I was going out with a bang. Who knows? I wouldn’t comment on it because I think both environments that I’ve spent my time preparing for a fight was a good one. I really liked the work I did with Chris. But who knows? That’s sport, I guess. It was a lot going on, in a crucial time – maybe didn’t help. But at the same time I’m a 28-year-old who spent his life fighting. I made every decision myself, so there won’t be one person who ships some blame. “Woulda, coulda.” Grant was there shouting and screaming – all the Steel City boys were. It was what it was, and I have to live with my decisions, and I feel sorry for Chris, if I’m being honest, because I put him in a terrible position and, since, I’ve apologized to him, because Chris is a good trainer. I didn’t show that. The little bits that I showed – there was some direct work from my camp with Chris. Things we’ve been working on. I just didn’t physically have it in me, or in my mind I didn’t believe so, to keep matching the intensity. In the meantime, I was trying to ride the storm or wait for it to slow a little bit, and then I was going to come. I was still in the fight. I was still fighting back. But the ref didn’t agree, and that was all she wrote. I’m not a sore loser. I’m not going to kick off and complain. I jumped out of the ring and gave the brothers respect, and congratulated them for their brother’s success. I jumped back in the ring for the announcement and for the interview. I went and done the presser. As a professional fighter, all of the things that are expected of me. I welcomed Galal into the ring and congratulated him into the press conference after. I think I played my part and did everything that was asked of me.
BS: How do you feel about the prospect of never fighting again?
Edwards: The sad thing is, once I’d done it, I genuinely felt relieved. And it’s the first time I’ve got out of the boxing ring and one of my first thoughts aren’t, “Who am I fighting next? When am I fighting? What’s next?” That just showed me, probably more than I accepted to myself, it felt like a relief, you know what I mean? And it should have felt more heartbreaking, and it just wasn’t.
I’m still very much going to be deeply linked and rooted in boxing. I’m not going anywhere. If anything I’d be popping up doing more other stuff [like commentary and management], but I think part of it is my body. If I’m honest, my body’s really taken the enjoyment and belief out of myself, because it’s slowly broken down. If I sat here and bored you with every single injury, every single fight I should have pulled out for, and for what, I’d probably be 7-0, 8-0 now. I’ve had one hand for fights, no hands for fights. I’ve rolled ankles just weeks before. I’ve done so many things. I’ve chipped collarbones. I can’t lift my right arm. My rotator cuffs are fucked. My knee goes. My elbow I can’t straighten out without hyperextending it – I probably need surgery on that as well. I’ve even got eye issues that I buried my head in the sand about so I could still fight. It’s just a lot, and it got to a period of time – I’m enjoying the other stuff and I’m also quite successful in other places. I’m starting to think at times that I was missing out on more that I could be doing outside of the ring, and I think it just altered and tweaked my mindset. That same ego and spite I had – the desire of wanting to be the best in the world, wanting to be the No. 1, disliking my opponents just because we’re fighting – that kind of faded as I got older. Maybe having kids changed my mindset outside of boxing, and that ego did really help me a lot more than I knew at the time.
BS: What does the future hold?
Edwards: I got to go to my son’s nativity play. The things that I’ve been really missing out on [because of] being in camp for fighting. … Being in America to fight [Adrian] Curiel, I happened to miss one of the things that I’ve been most excited about ever since I’ve thought about having a child of my own. Having to watch sports day through a FaceTime … that was a big part of a lot of my mindset changing. I sit here and I convince everyone that I do it all for my kids, but then my kids are looking at the end of the race, and the other kids have got their dads there, and their dad’s watching through a phone. It just got to the point where I weren’t 100 per cent sure if the juice was worth the squeeze. All of the stuff I’m missing out on – for what?
A bit of managing, a bit of commentary. I’ve already been contacted about coming in and joining fighters’ camps for periods of time and working corners. I’ve got aspirations to want to promote. I had, this year, my first co-promotion with the Sauerlands [Kalle and Nisse], when [my brother] Charlie fought Thomas Assomba. I’ve really been trying to diversify. Other industries that I have been flirting with the idea of stepping foot in, the conversations are becoming incredibly easier and more likely now that I’m not an active boxer that has to go and bury his head away. I’m quite excited for the future. Would I rule out ever stepping back in the ring? I probably wouldn’t. But at the same time, I genuinely am in no rush, and if I don’t ever feel the level that I was – which I feel very, very far off from now – then I will never return. I don’t need boxing to make stuff happen, in the sense of competing. I enjoy the other parts of it and think I can make a difference in a lot of fighters’ careers for the good, from the other side of the lens.
Potentially, [I could be a trainer]. I don’t want to rush to try to train my first fighter – that’s a big commitment. A trainer should never decide to stop training with a fighter. If you’re a trainer, and that fighter likes you, if you start training that fighter, you should see it through to the end of their career. Until I’m ready for that commitment, there’s gyms I’m very close to; there’s fighters I manage. My brother is an active professional still. I’ve got things I think I’ll be able to get my hands into, and training is something I’ve always really looked forward to and always enjoyed doing. I always enjoyed helping train fighters in the gym, helping doing pads and stuff. But I stopped doing pads and stuff when my wrists started going bad. Then I just weren’t trying to get injuries. At some point, maybe in a few years, I do think I’ll end up as [a trainer], because I do think that’s the closest thing to the feeling I got for so long from the boxing ring.
When I turned pro, there’s world champions and people fighting for world titles for £10,000, £15,000, £20,000 at 8 p.m. on the undercard of a bigger fight. That really was the market that I looked at walking into. For everyone that bought in, engaged, got emotionally involved in a fight at flyweight, I just want to say thank you, and long may it continue. I hope Galal has a great push and a great career, whoever goes on to reign.
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