UFC fighter Belal Muhammad is set to claim the title of ‘the greatest welterweight fighter of all time’ as he faces UFC champion Leon Edwards at UFC 304.
Belal Muhammad is currently ranked #2 in the UFC welterweight rankings, but he hopes to become a legend. In a recent interview with MMA Fighting, he spoke about his dream of making history by becoming the best welterweight fighter in MMA history.
“My goal isn’t to be the champion. My goal is to be the best welterweight to ever do it,… I’m right underneath Georges St Pierre. You give me Shavkat, … you give me Ian Garry, and then I walk through all of them, there’s nothing else. I’m just going to be cemented as the best to ever do it.
Fighting Leon Edwards will take Muhammad one step closer to his goals. The bout will be the UFC champion’s-Leon Edwards-first since his win against Colby Covington seven months ago. The fighter is eager to get back on his feet, and so is Muhammad.
“I love to fight,” Muhammad told MMA Fighting. “You have no idea how antsy I am, where I’m telling my coach, ‘Let’s do something, let’s just get somebody else.
“My goal is to win this belt and then go back to Abu Dhabi and have my first title defense there [at UFC 308]. I want to stay active. I’m always training, I’m always in the gym, I’m always working. We get paid to fight. We don’t get paid to sit on the sidelines.”
Due to Edwards’s long break from MMA, Muhammad believes the fighter may just be clinging to relevance and has nothing else to show.
“Leon, like I said, it’s a fear thing,” Muhammad said. “He knows these next matchups are going to be tough, he knows that he’s going to lose. He knows once this fight was signed, it was like, ‘Alright, well, this is my last couple of chances walking around with this belt. This is my last couple of chances to be on a GQ magazine or going to a soccer game,’ or something stupid like that. Because after he loses, nobody’s going to give him any attention. He doesn’t get any attention otherwise.
“If he didn’t have this belt, nobody would know who he is. He doesn’t talk for himself. He doesn’t promote himself. And he doesn’t even know how to speak. Even when he goes on these podcasts, he’s like whispering. He just looks so stupid. He looks fearful, he just looks like he doesn’t belong here. That belt doesn’t belong on his shoulder. It belongs on my shoulder. Once I get the belt, I’m going to show the division.”
The fight will take place in Edward’s home country [Manchester], and he can not wait to defeat the champ and begin his reign as champion.
“I love it,” Muhammad said. “When I look at stuff, and I always bring up, what’s God’s plan? You wanted [UFC] 300? You wanted to be the headliner of 300? But when I saw this opportunity, when I saw I was going to Manchester, I was like, ‘Bro, that’s what it is. That’s where this chapter ends.
“That’s where this title reign, this title run — one of the hardest title runs I think in UFC history when you look at the matchups I had, the people I had to fight — it ends with me going to his hometown, beating him on his home soil, and taking the belt from there and bringing it back here.”
