Boxing: Sheffield's former world champ Sunny Edwards quits after defeat

The Greystones, Sheffield-based, former world flyweight champion was stopped in six rounds by his rival Galal Yafai, in Birmingham on Saturday.

It was Olympic gold medallist Yafai's ninth professional fight - and at times a one-sided way to collect the vacant interim WBC title.

Edwards, who says he still has a good relationship with Steel City trainer Grant Smith but left because of what he described as the "environment" there, looked completely out of sorts.

After two rounds, the crestfallen 28-year-old was overheard uttering to new trainer Chris Williams: “Can I be real with you? I don’t want to be in here."

Edwards, who tasted defeat for the second time in his 23-fight career, later declared his decision to retire, saying: "If I won the fight, I was going into the sunset.

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"If I'm being perfectly honest, my body's falling apart, man. I've got bad ankles, I've got bad wrists, I've got bad shoulders, I've got a bad back - everything about me is bad at this moment."

Edwards, who had a decade honing his skills in Sheffield, was in trouble from the first moment.

He said: “Galal started really fast, we knew he would, but if I’m perfectly, perfectly honest, win, lose or draw – my team know this – I was retiring tonight,” Edwards said.

"I don’t have the same energy that I had for the sport; for the process.

“I put so much into the first six, seven years of my career that I just needed a break.

"I needed a break, really, before this fight, but I always want to compete with the best, and while I was the number one I wanted to be involved in the biggest fights; the biggest events" he said after the duel.

"I knew it was going to be hard tonight, but the Sunny Edwards of 12 months ago would have gone longer than six rounds.

“I don’t fully agree that the fight got stopped when it got stopped, but he was throwing a lot and I weren’t responding with a lot. I didn’t feel ridiculously hurt in there, but once Galal starts letting his hands go, it’s hard to get away from.

“For the first time ever I’ve been more thinking and concentrating outside of the sport. My family; my kids. I’ve been going through some stuff in my personal life that I’m trying to set up for the future.

"But I knew Galal was going to be a hard fight – I said it the whole way through. Maybe I didn’t think as hard as it turned out to be tonight, but all props to the best man. He more than won tonight.

"If I was him I’d class myself as a world champion – he beat the number one in the division, very conclusively.”

It was a better night for another fighter to have recently left the city, Stevi Levy.

The Dave Allen-managed featherweight headlined at York Hall, Bethnal Green and beat Katherine Quintana.