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UFC Fight Night 87 results: Leon Edwards shuts out Dominic Waters for unanimous decision

Ben Fowlkes  |  USA TODAY Sports

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ROTTERDAM, Netherlands – Leon Edwards gave up an early takedown to Dominic Waters, only to immediately get back to his feet and nab a takedown of his own, which he put to better use than his opponent had.

That, all in the first minute, was the story of this three-round fight, as Edwards (11-3 MMA, 3-2 UFC) did everything Waters (9-5 MMA, 0-3 UFC) did, but just a little bit better. The result was a clear unanimous decision victory for Edwards, who took every round on the judges' scorecards.

The welterweight bout was part of the preliminary card of today's UFC Fight Night 87 event at Ahoy Rotterdam in Rotterdam, Netherlands. It streamed on UFC Fight Pass ahead of the rest of the card on FOX Sports 1.

For almost the entirety of the bout, Edwards controlled it no matter where it went. He stung Waters on the feet with short lefts and sharp knees. He dominated Waters on the mat, taking him down in every round and at one point even securing full mount.

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The only thing Edwards didn't ever come close to doing was finishing the fight. Though he had Waters on defense for most of their 15 minutes together, and while he blasted Waters with a few isolated shots on the feet, he never seemed to be on the verge of putting him away, contenting himself instead with controlling the fight rather than ending it.

For his part, Waters had a few brief moments of offense, mostly in the form of takedowns, but each time Edwards halted his attack and then immediately countered with a similar one of his own, as if making the point to the judges that he could do anything his opponent could do, and just a little bit better.

In the end, it made the judges' work easy. All three saw it for Edwards by scores of 30-27 across the board. But after the fight, despite his dominance in the win, the UFC announced Edwards had to be transported to a local hospital for what was thought to be a broken orbital bone.

"I feel amazing," Edwards said before his trip to the hospital. "I’ve been working on my grappling and wrestling, so I’m happy to go in there and show that I can wrestle. I can strike and everything. I thought he would do exactly what he did. I knew he’s not very active off his back, so I thought I’d put him on his back. I’ll fight whoever. I just want to keep climbing and climbing and climbing. I want to be world champion. That’s my dream, so I’ll just keep chipping away."

Edwards gets back into the win column after a decision loss to Kamaru Usman in December, giving him his third win in four fights. Waters has now lost three straight in the UFC.

Up-to-the-minute UFC Fight Night 87 results include:

For complete coverage of UFC Fight Night 87, check out the UFC Events section of the site.

(MMAjunkie's John Morgan and Mike Bohn contributed to this report on site in Rotterdam.)

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