Kamaru Usman and Belal Muhammad have been at odds for years now, but it doesn\u2019t appear an in-octagon meeting will happen anytime soon.<\/p>\n
On Friday, at a fan Q&A in Abu Dhabi ahead of Saturday\u2019s UFC 321 event, Usman explained why a bout has not materialized despite the longstanding beef between the two fighters.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t have a lot of back and forth, it was just a lot coming from him,\u201d Usman said. \u201cI just think he\u2019s a dork and what you do with dorks is you ignore them. This is the thing, for someone like myself and Belal Muhammad, right now Belal Muhammad is ranked No. 1 in the division? And I\u2019m below him. I\u2019m looking at the title. I\u2019ve been where he hasn\u2019t been. Yes, of course he\u2019s been a champion, but we saw what happened when it was time for you to defend. So I have nothing to gain from fighting Belal Muhammad, he has all to gain.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s why he\u2019s the one calling me out, he has all to gain from me. I\u2019m not here to waste time. I want to get the title ,and I want to continue on my track of defending, being that champion again. If I have the title ,and he\u2019s the next guy, I would luckily kick his head in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Usman and Muhammad\u2019s feud appeared to come to a head in September 2024 when Muhammad was set to appear on Usman and Henry Cejudo\u2019s Pound 4 Pound podcast. The episode is yet to be released, with both sides blaming the other for an altercation that occurred during recording. Cejudo said Usman and Belal became physical<\/a>, while Muhammad recently claimed Usman had \u201ctears coming out his eyes\u201d<\/a> during the alleged exchange.<\/p>\n Regardless, a bout failed to materialize with Usman instead going on to defeat Joaquin Buckley at UFC Atlanta, and Muhammad currently scheduled to fight Ian Machado Garry at UFC Qatar on Nov. 22 after losing the welterweight title to Jack Della Maddalena at UFC 315.<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear exactly who Usman faces next, though he is aiming to compete on the upcoming UFC White House event in June and possibly for a chance to regain the welterweight championship if everything lines up just right for him.<\/p>\n \u201cI think good odds because plan is, hopefully, fingers crossed, after this fight in the next couple of weeks with Islam [Makhachev] and [Jack Della Maddalena], hopefully the winner of that is going to want to take downtime,\u201d Usman said. \u201cIf it\u2019s Islam, Ramadan\u2019s coming, so we\u2019re going to want to sit for a couple of months and so White House should be a perfect time to get back in there. So we\u2019ll see, I don\u2019t know, like I said I\u2019m aiming for the title so whoever it is.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kamaru Usman and Belal Muhammad have been at odds for years now, but it doesn\u2019t appear an in-octagon…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237290,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,82,640,702],"class_list":{"0":"post-237289","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc","15":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}