“I’m the one being active,” Belal Muhammad argues for the right to leapfrog Leon Edwards for a shot at 170lbs gold
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Belal Muhammad and Leon Edwards
The American Mixed martial artist, Belal Muhammad stormed into the top five rankings of the Welterweight division with a win against the former UFC Welterweight title challenger, Stephen Thompson in his last fight at UFC Vegas 45.
Belal Muhammad is 8-1-1 in his last ten fights and he is undefeated in his last seven fights. He holds only one no contest in his fight against Leon Edwards that ended due to an accidental eye poke and since that loss, Muhammad has been calling out Edwards to run things back with him.
Talking about the same in his latest interview with MMA Fighting, Belal Muhammad says, “I don’t think he’ll fight me, I think he’s playing the politics game. He knows that I’m a bad matchup for him. Before, he had that excuse ‘oh he’s ranked No. 12 it doesn’t make no sense for No. 3 to fight No. 12.’ Well now I’m ranked No. 5 — now what’s your excuse? There’s a card coming to London, why not?”
Leon Edwards is targeted to face the UFC champion, Kamaru Usman for his next title defense but nothing is official until now and Belal Muhammad wants to utilize this opportunity and leapfrog ahead of him.
He continued, “That’s why I think that it pushes me better if he’s going to sit there and wait, Usman, he’s an active champion, he deserves some time off to be with his daughter and family and things like that. So he’s earned that. So if he wants to wait until next summer, if I get one more big name win in before Leon, I literally fought eight times while Leon’s fought three times in the last two or three years.”
“I’m the one pushing. I’m the one being active. Dana White says he likes active fighters. He doesn’t like these people waiting. So, if I go out there and get a big win, I think I earned to definitely skip in front of him.” {H/t MMA Fighting}
Belal Muhammad believes his current resume is far better than Leon Edwards
Belal Muhammad recently defeated two former UFC title challengers, Demain Maia and Stephen Thompson and Leon Edwards holds a victory against Nate Diaz, in which he was nearly knocked out towards the end of the fight, which is why Muhammad thinks he is currently having a better resume than ‘Rocky’.
He added, “I feel like I’ve earned a skip in front of him already just based off of the level of opponent I’ve fought, I’ve fought Maia and Wonderboy back-to-back. Who did he beat? Rafael dos Anjos and Nate Diaz, who are both 155-pounders.”
“He hasn’t fought any ranked 170-pounders that are actually ranked and good right now. It doesn’t make any sense to me but I’m not going to sit there and cry about it. I’m just going to get back on the horse and keep fighting.” {H/t MMA Fighting}
Also Read: Tension builds up as Belal Muhammad and Khamzat Chimaev gets into an ugly Twitter war.
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Tanya Goyal
(254 Articles Published)