Belal Muhammad is finished calling out at least one potential opponent who clearly has no interest in actually fighting him.<\/p>\n
For the better part of the past year, Muhammad appeared in a perfect position to battle fellow former UFC welterweight champion Kamaru Usman after engaging in a volatile war of words through interviews, social media, and even a podcast interview they did together. After losing his title and falling to Ian Machado Garry this past November, Muhammad was awaiting word on his next opponent, and with Usman out of action for several months following a win over Joaquin Buckley, it looked like the perfect time to finally make that fantasy fight become a reality.<\/p>\n
But the offer never came, and instead the UFC matched Muhammad up against rising welterweight prospect Gabriel Bonfim, whom he now faces in the UFC Vegas 118 main event on Saturday. Of course, Muhammad didn\u2019t blink at accepting the fight, but it also told him that any hope he had to eventually settle the score with Usman was already dead and buried.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, it\u2019s like I\u2019m not even thinking about him anymore,\u201d Muhammad told MMA Fighting about Usman. \u201cThe guy\u2019s been avoiding me forever. So I\u2019m not going to keep chasing somebody. So my mindset is Bonfim and then looking at the next guy.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Usman] got away. It\u2019s whatever. For me, I can\u2019t think about him anymore. Now it\u2019s Gabriel. Once they said him, I\u2019m like, all right, that\u2019s it. Now it\u2019s about getting my hand raised. Getting back in the win column and reminding people who I am.\u201d<\/p>\n
Muhammad was adamant in the past that he saw Usman as his ideal opponent, as he started working his way back into title contention after losing the belt this past May.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, he was never granted his wish, so Muhammad has moved on to bigger and better opportunities, and he does not expect to ever cross paths with Usman in the future.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no need for it anymore, for myself,\u201d Muhammad said about calling out Usman again. \u201cThen it looks like you\u2019re a bully, and I don\u2019t like picking on guys.\u201d<\/p>\n
Truth be told, Muhammad says the opponent really didn\u2019t matter to him as much as getting back in the win column after suffering two losses in a row for the first time in his career.<\/p>\n
While there\u2019s no shame in either loss, Muhammad acknowledges that falling to Garry bothers him a lot, not only because eye pokes dramatically affected him, but he also dealt with a mysterious bout of vertigo that hit him just after he weighed in for the fight.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went into that fight with vertigo,\u201d Muhammad revealed. \u201cI had vertigo after my weigh-in, and it was the first time I ever felt it. I was literally head shaking the whole time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Muhammad says he still has no idea how it happened, and the doctors in Qatar didn\u2019t exactly draw him a road map about his vertigo diagnosis much less how to treat it with the fight just 24 hours away.<\/p>\n
One thing for certain, Muhammad knows it wasn\u2019t his weight cut, but figuring out the true culprit was just impossible, especially with so little time to spare before he had to set foot in the octagon to do battle with Garry.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, it was the easiest weight cut,\u201d Muhammad said. \u201cWe saw a doctor from out there, and he said it was a chemical imbalance, so we think it was something with the shakes that we got, that something went wrong with them. But it was the weirdest thing ever that happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the doctor out there was like so weird, it was a doctor from Qatar, and he\u2019s like \u2018just have soup.\u2019 I\u2019m like, what the heck does soup do for you? I was like, is there any medicine? He\u2019s like the only medicine we have will make you drowsy. That was the hardest part of just trying to figure it out because you\u2019re not getting an honest answer.\u201d<\/p>\n
There was a moment where Muhammad actually thought he might not be able to compete, but even if he wasn\u2019t at 100%, there was no way he was going to pull out of his fight on such short notice.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was close to being pulled out,\u201d Muhammad said. \u201cIt was like, nah, we\u2019ve been here for two weeks, we\u2019ve been in Qatar. You\u2019re never going to feel healthy with every fight, so you\u2019ve just got to go out there and see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now recovered from vertigo and determined to get back on track on Saturday, Muhammad believes it\u2019s time to show Bonfim that he\u2019s a good fighter but not quite ready for elite competition at welterweight.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been in there with the best of the best,\u201d Muhammad said. \u201cI\u2019ve been in there with all of these guys and stylistically I\u2019ve seen his style before. He\u2019s never really been in there with anybody like me. Stylistically he\u2019s never seen anybody fight like me. Yeah, I think for himself it\u2019s going to be one of those \u2018oh OK, that\u2019s the level, that\u2019s the next level, that\u2019s what it\u2019s supposed to be.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cBut my mindset right now is just reminding. Reminding the world, reminding myself and I still think I\u2019m the best fighter in the welterweight division but I\u2019ve just got to go out there and prove it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Belal Muhammad is finished calling out at least one potential opponent who clearly has no interest in actually…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":712683,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396,14855],"class_list":["post-712682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news","tag-videos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=712682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/712683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=712682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=712682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=712682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}