Sunny Edwards won’t wage war with IBF world flyweight champion Moruti Mthalane

BY RICHARD CAWLEY

Sunny Edwards is not planning to go in the trenches with IBF flyweight world champion Moruti Mthalane tomorrow night.

The Croydon fighter, 25, has a perfect 15-0 record but faces easily the toughest test since he turned professional in 2016.

South African Mthalane, 38, has 26 knockouts in 39 victories and his last loss was in 2008 to Filipino star Nonito Donaire, who has won world titles in four weight classes.

This will be his fifth defence of his IBF belt as he looks to extend his victory streak to 17 bouts.

“I think I will have to move around and have a look for the whole 12 rounds,” said Edwards, whose older brother Charlie held the WBC world title at the same weight. “You don’t go head on against an immovable object, I’ve got to try and work around it for as long as I can.

“This is definitely a 12-round fight and I have trained for 15. I wouldn’t try and beat him in an arm wrestle, so I am not going to try and beat him in a fight.

“He is heavily avoided, we know that. I think he’s had 10 world title fights and nobody has ever given him a unification shot.

“He has proved time and time again he will be the away fighter, even as a world champion.You have to understand the beast I am getting in the ring with. I do.”

Edwards once spent time with Mthalane during a training camp in Ukraine.

“He is top of the division, top of the tree and he is where everybody else wants to be,” said the South Londoner. “When I got out of the ring in Ukraine he said I would 100 per cent be a world champion. Hopefully that will be on April 30 and against him, but he is such a nice man and a great champion.

“I do genuinely feel honoured to be sharing a ring with him, but all the friendliness will fall by the wayside when that first bell goes.

“I just need to win and having that world title would mean the absolute world to me. It would put me up there with the top British fighters right now.”