Belal Muhammad wants to be a fighting champion.
Just days away from his first opportunity at winning a title at UFC 304, the top-ranked welterweight contender hasn’t lost sight on the task at hand, which means stepping into enemy territory and beating Leon Edwards on the champ’s home soil.
Muhammad’s busy schedule came to a sudden halt after he became the No. 1 contender in May 2023 because he had to sit on the sidelines for months waiting for Edwards to finally defend his belt against Colby Covington this past December.
Now, seven months after Edwards’ win over Covington, Muhammad is anxious to back to work, with a promise that a win on Saturday will finally get the division moving again.
“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.”
While Edwards has dealt with periods of inactivity over the past few years, especially during the pandemic, he defended his belt twice in 2023, which is the typical schedule for most UFC champions.
The timing for Muhammad’s title shot really centered around UFC’s return to England, with Edwards and interim heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall headlining the card together.
Still, Muhammad isn’t buying that Edwards is just operating on the UFC’s clock, but instead believes the champ is clinging onto relevancy for just a little while longer.
“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. He doesn’t even know how to speak. Even when he goes on these podcasts, he’s like whispering. He just look 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.”
Muhammad even embraces the chance to do this in Edwards’ home country with a crowd who will definitely be on the champ’s side.
In fact, he feels like Manchester is the ideal location to 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.”
As long as Muhammad has waited for this opportunity, he makes it clear that becoming UFC champion isn’t the exclamation point he’s wanted to add to his career accomplishments.
Instead, the 36-year-old veteran who trains out of Chicago believes that winning a title is just the start of something much bigger for him.
“My goal isn’t to be the champion,” Muhammad said. “My goal is to be the best welterweight to ever do it, so for me to go out there and beat Leon, who beat [Kamaru] Usman twice, who everybody thought was the best welterweight to do it, then I’m ahead of him and I’m right underneath [Georges St-Pierre].”
Assuming he’s successful on Saturday, Muhammad can’t wait for the next challenge awaiting him and promises he won’t be picking favorites once he has the belt.
With aspirations to fight as often as possible and defend the belt, Muhammad hopes UFC begins lining up opponents right away so he can begin knocking them down one by one.
“You give me Shavkat [Rakhmonov], you give me [Jack Della Maddalena], you give me Ian Garry, and then I walk through all of them, there’s nothing else,” Muhammad said. “I’m just going to be cemented as the best to ever do it.”
