Career

Yves Ed'duvill Edwards (born September 30, 1976) is a Bahamian mixed martial arts fighter. He currently fights as a lightweight in the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

Edwards began training in traditional karate in his youth, moving on to kung fu before eventually taking up mixed martial arts. This also led him to muay thai in order to improve his stand-up.

Like many aspiring martial artists, Edwards cites Hong Kong cinema as a formative influence:

“I’ve always liked the old Hong Kong flicks, and I was a big comic book fan: you know the superheroes, they were always big in my mind. Anything that will make me physically better than the average person, and teach me to do things that the average person can’t do, I was game for it.” Based in Houston since his teens, Edwards says he learned some grappling on a trip back home to the Bahamas at the age of seventeen, although “it wasn’t as technical as it should have been, but it was better than not getting anything.”

He is a well-rounded fighter, with a strong boxing background, having also trained with Lewis Wood, a #6 WBA Featherweight boxer. This is in addition to his experience in muay thai and brazilian jiu jitsu, of which he says “I’ve never worn a gi cause I’ve always been competing”.

Something of a showman, Edwards calls his fighting style ‘Thugjitsu’ (a name that comes from discussion of Edwards training on the Underground forum), which he describes as “the modern art of the beat-downs and it’s also the greatest show on earth…It’s just finding what’s a weakness in your opponent compared to your strength, and just exploiting it.” Edwards also teaches Thugjitsu at The Revolution Dojo in Houston, Texas.