Leon Edwards did not have an easy upbringing. “Rocky” moved to the UK from Kingston, Jamaica at the tender age of nine. However, things took a grave turn only four years later when Edwards was thirteen as his father was shot and killed in a London nightclub. After this, Leon and his brother began to get into trouble on the streets and in school.
However, finding MMA helped Leon positively channel some of the energy he put into being a miscreant. And recently, he addressed his tumultuous upbringing and his Jamaican heritage in a video on the GQ Sports channel. Leon began, “I was born in Kingston, Jamaica, immigrated to the UK when I was 10,9, 10 years old.”
“So this is like my roots, ” he continued. “Moving from Jamaica to the UK, it was like, ‘Can you speak Patois?’ You don’t speak like English, you know,” said Edwards. He also talked about the difficulties he had in adjusting and how his hometown’s Caribbean community helped him overcome them.
“But over time you got used to the lingo and the language… And this is what I call home now. There’s a big Caribbean community in the UK, Caribbean, or African. It’s a mixed culture…That’s why I adapted so fast to it” said Leon about his Jamaican heritage and moving to the UK. The Kingston-born welterweight champ has never shied away from his roots in his UFC career.
Why did Leon Edwards and his family move to the UK?
Leon Edwards and his family moved from Jamaica when he and his brother were children. Leon’s father had separated from his mother and left for England in search of a better life. However, “Rocky” once revealed in an interview that his mother kept him and his brother safe while their father tried to make a better living in a foreign country.
Eventually, weary of the toxic environment surrounding them in Kingston, Leon finally reunited with his father in England. He recalled the move to Ashton, England, being calming and peaceful. But the Jamaican-born welterweight also recalled how novel everything was to him in England initially.
"I told you mom. I told you I'd do it." 😭
— SPORTbible (@sportbible) August 21, 2022
Leon Edwards calling his mum after he became UFC champion ❤️ pic.twitter.com/h8Dd9hluEz
“I knew all from T.V that it would be a safer way to live in and grow up and that’s what my father thought and I should thank him for bringing his family to the UK,” is what Leon Edwards once said about the move to the UK. Surely, as he looks back on it, he will be glad that his mother and father took the brave step of exploring new horizons in search of better opportunities.
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