WBC flyweight champion Charlie Edwards has a vision for his future.
Before entering the ring at the Copper Box on Saturday night, where he would beat his first challenger Angel Moreno, he paused to close his eyes. “As Bruce Lee says you need to go into that still moment. And I take away everything. I take myself out of where I am. And I close my eyes, I do my deep breaths. And I kind of go into a meditation state where I just focus on my breathing and that takes away everything around me. It calms me right down and then when I can hear all the noise coming from the crowd, all I’m doing is soaking all the energy in,” he said afterwards.
Edwards explained, “I really felt great in there. Do you know I’ve loved every second of every minute of this week, I’ve lapped it up. This is where I’m supposed to be, I’ve wanted to be here so long. And now I’m here I’m ready to rule as a champion and to behave like a champion. I’ve got a commitment now to the WBC and to inspire younger generations coming up. So I loved every second of it and it’s took me up another level becoming a world champion and it’s made me more hungry more determined and more committed to my game. I want to rule for a very long time and I want to go down as a British great or a world great even. I’m my only limit so anything’s possible.”
His plan is to take on a rival world champion next, before possibly moving up to super-flyweight. “Ideally, I would love to unify next. I’d love to fight Moruti Mthalane [the IBF champion]. I went out to watch him fight actually before I got the [Cristofer] Rosales fight. We went to the Manny Pacquiao-Matthysse card. My sponsors took me out there to watch him in the flesh. Because we said there might have been some inklings about fighting him. So we went out there, took a look at him. And from that day I was like I want to fight him, I can beat this guy,” Edwards said. “He’s got the IBF belt which I want. I’ve been beat for the IBF belt before. So I don’t see why it can’t happen.”
Charlie’s promoter Eddie Hearn would like to make that fight in July in the UK, perhaps even on a Dillian Whyte undercard. “I think Charlie wants to be an active world champion. I think we’ve got a pretty good ratio of keeping fighters nice and active,” Hearn said. “For me the next fight should be a unification fight and then I think if he wins that I think he should move up and try and become a two-weight world champion and fight Kal Yafai. I think it’s a big domestic fight. There was a bit of interest first time around but Charlie was almost searching for that professional credibility, well he’s gotten beyond that now. He is the number one ranked flyweight in the world.”
