Former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Middleweight champion Sean Strickland lost his rematch against Dricus du Plessis at UFC 312 this past weekend (Sat., Feb. 8, 2025), losing a forgettable unanimous decision from inside Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia (watch highlights).
Deservingly, Strickland has been criticized by fighters and analysts for his performance “Down Under.” Current Welterweight champion Belal Muhammad piped up and completely trashed “Tarzan.”
“I’ve been saying it forever: Sean sucks. He’s trash,” Muhammad said in a video he posted on social media. “He talks a big game, but he never walks. Even to the fans that sit there and hype him up, like, ‘He’s the best boxer, has the best boxing defense,’ this and that. ‘He’s going to go to war, he’s going to kill,’ ‘I would bleed for my fans, I would die for my fans, blah blah blah,’ but you go out there, and he just jabs and teeps and he fights like a scared little girl, and he doesn’t want to get hit.
“Even when you’re down four rounds, he doesn’t go all out,” Muhammad added. “He doesn’t have it in him unless there are five seconds left in the fight, and he wants to yell and have that highlight reel. He wants people to say he’s crazy and nuts. He’s not. He’s just a racist little clown that’s hiding in a body of a fighter. He’s a scared little boy hiding in the body of a fighter. He’s a coward, and he shows it in his fights…He sucks. And finally, we get to get rid of giving this guy undeserved title shots.”
Muhammad believes Strickland will mention his pretty obvious staph infection, which he went into the fight with as an excuse.
“And now he’s going to come up with, ‘Oh, man, I had staph,'” Muhammad said. “‘Let me tell you something guys, I get paid a lot of money, and I got staph, but I was going to still fight for you guys because I have to put a show on for my fans, and then I broke my nose so that messed up my whole fight even though I lost the first three rounds just by jabbing one time every five minutes. Yeah, man, it was all from the staph, that’s why I wore sleeveless shirts at the press conference so you guys could see it and have this excuse built up already, and my fans will know that I still stepped in there for you.'”
There is no love lost between Strickland and Muhammad, so it was only a matter of time before “Remember the Name” unloaded on him.
It’s a good thing Muhammad didn’t say anything about Strickland being boring or not getting finishes … because that would be like a pot calling a kettle black.
For complete UFC 312 results, coverage, and highlights, click HERE.