It was a tricky situation, hence the odds, edwards sub and itd plays had crazy value. But that is what good cappers want to look for, the missing angle, not the chalked up fave.
I went back and looked at every single time Tumenov was on bottom, and he never once had a technical standup. All of his escapes were explosive, or aka "white belt moves" to bjjers. He was even just bear hugging Gunnar from bottom, it doesn't matter who is on top of you, that's just shitty defense.
On the other hand, edwards even tho going up against lesser competition was displaying big improvements in his details. There are a few details grapplers start doing once they "get it" and start understanding the concepts/rules of the ground game. There are a lot of these signs and I won't get into all of them, but one of the biggest things to look for is proper understanding of the "seatbelt" and back control and the position of your leg entries to obtain proper control. One of the least understood positions in MMA, but one of the most powerful positions in modern bjj. Edwards learned this concept and you could see him using it transitioning to take the back against Waters, he basically used that one position to finish Tumenov.
We used to have guys like Plekz, who although always wrong about Conor, had great input when it came to bjj details and would be discussing these points. But it is hard now to get an in depth conversation going where we can reach that level of professional discourse.