Belal Muhammad has shared his thoughts on UFC 296’s main event, and they are not very complimentary towards the challenger or champion.
Now that Leon Edwards has dealt with Colby Covington, No. 2 ranked welterweight Belal Muhammad would like the next title shot, please and thank you.
Muhammad is on a nine-fight win streak and has dominated his past five opponents. There’s no one else with a resume that good at 170 pounds, but for some reason the UFC seems extremely reluctant to book Belal vs. Leon 2. Well, let’s not play dumb: the reason is money.
The promotion doesn’t consider Edwards vs. Muhammad to be a particularly bankable fight, and they’re probably right. In the era of endless brawls and gutter trash talk, who wants to try and sell a simple best vs. best match-up?
Muhammad was on UFC Unfiltered recently to discuss UFC 296, and he made his case for the No. 1 contender’s spot.
“There’s unfinished business there,” he said, referencing a No Contest with Edwards from 2021. “And for me, I’ve beaten five top-10 fighters after that. Four of those were top-5 fighters. And I dominated them. I dominated Gilbert Burns on three weeks notice. I haven’t lost in five years. There’s nobody that should be ahead of me for this title fight.”
“Let me and Leon fight, I’ll give [Shavkat Rakhmonov] the next fight,” he continued. “I’m not gonna be that champion that sits out and calls for Conor McGregor or somebody like that. I want to fight the best fighters in the world. I bled, I sweat, I cried, everything I needed to do to get to this point and I did everything right. So I deserve the shot and I earned the shot, it’s not given to me, there’s no privilege here. I’m on a nine fight win streak. What else do I need to do?”
While Belal said he wasn’t willing to adopt a fake persona and talk trash to promote fights, his unvarnished thoughts on Edwards vs. Covington were pretty critical.
OK this camera work from the other night was pretty good pic.twitter.com/3lKVgmsQ8w
— OOC MMA (@oocmma) December 18, 2023
“Honestly, I don’t think it was even ring rust, I just think Colby sucks,” Muhammad said. “Like Colby’s not good. The guys he’s beaten were all on their way out, no disrespect to those guys, but most of them were on three fight, four fight losing streaks. So Colby definitely didn’t earn a spot, and he showed it this time when you’re going against a high level guy in Leon Edwards.”
“He literally looked like an amateur out there. His striking looked terrible, his wrestling didn’t even look good. The only time he was able to get takedowns was in the fourth and fifth rounds when Leon got tired, and that’s always been his issue too. But I knew from the beginning that Colby wasn’t good and I always said that Colby’s the easiest fight in the division. If I was ever able to fight him I’d embarrass him, but he embarrassed himself.”
As for Edwards?
“I wish [Leon] broke his jaw,” he said. “Colby deserved to have his jaw broken or his nose broken or another chipped tooth somewhere in there. To me, honestly, Leon didn’t look great in that fight. I think Colby just sucks. But Leon could have done a lot more in that fight to prove himself and cement himself as a pound-for-pound king.”
Another thing that could help Edwards cement himself as a king? Taking on the toughest contender, even if it’s not the most lucrative match-up.