BELAL MUHAMMAD feared his career was over after the premature ending to his first meeting with Leon Edwards.
The Palestinian-American locked horns with the welterweight king in a short-notice Covid clash at the UFC‘s Apex facility in Las Vegas in March 2021.
Edwards looked to dust off the cobwebs against the Chicago clubber after a near two-year-long hiatus, which was in large part down to the pandemic.
But his comeback clash ended in an agonising No Contest after an accidental eye poke rendered Muhammad unable to continue.
It soon became clear and evident that Muhammad wasn’t looking for a way out, like many fighters have in the past, as he was overcome with emotion.
But what wasn’t apparent to the millions of MMA fans watching at home was that he could see nothing but black in the eye he’d previously had issues with earlier in his career.
“I literally thought I was blind,” Muhammad told SunSport in an exclusive interview earlier this month. “The toughest thing I had to do was deal with the eye surgery.
“When you have an eye surgery, it’s the most depressing thing because you can’t do nothing.
“You have to be in a certain head position for, you know, four or five months. You can’t train and I love to train.”
Muhammad couldn’t help but think about the time doctors told him to call it quits when he first damaged his eye as he lay in agony on the octagon canvas.
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He continued: “I love to work out and the doctor is telling you like, ‘This is a stupid decision if you’re going to go back to the fighting.
“You’re like, ‘Bro, this is all I know. This, this is what I am. There’s no Plan B.’
“And in that fight, in that moment, it was like, ‘Bro, you can’t see nothing.
“You’re shocked and you’re like, ‘Bro, he was right. The doctor, he said this was gonna happen, now it’s happened. You’re like fudge.”
It took the best part of an hour for vision to slowly start returning to Muhammad’s right eye. And to say he felt a huge sense of relief would be an understatement,
He said: “Literally, it took like maybe like 30 or 40 minutes after it [happened] to finally see some light out of there.
“You’re like, ‘Oh my God, I still got vision. I still could see.’ It was like, it was tough, man.”
He may be well over three years removed from the ordeal, but Muhammad, to this day, still gets the “fear” when recalling the most harrowing moment of his career.
“At that moment, it was like one of those heart-dropping moments, heart-wrenching moments for me,” he said.”
“Like like you said, when you bring up back the memory with it, it like still puts fear in me.”
Muhammad and Edwards will renew their rivalry a week on Sunday morning in the main event of UFC 304 in Manchester, but this time as challenger and champion,
Edwards, 32, has been adamant with his belief the fight was only going one way after he rocked Muhammad with a picture-perfect head kick in the first round.
But Muhammad – who has won his last five in a row – insists the Brummie is misplaced with his belief he would’ve won the fight via stoppage.
Edwards could be guilty of underestimating Muhammad’s much-improved skill set when they lock horns at the brand-spanking-new Co-op Live Arena.
And Muhammad reckons that overconfidence could end up being be a fatal blow to the Brummie’s title reign.
“I’m hoping he comes out with that same mentality,” he said. “I’m hoping that he thinks that it’s gonna be an easy fight.
“Even with that first fight, when you’re going back and you’re watching it, he had one moment. It was a head kick.
“There was nothing else in that first round where you’re looking at like, ‘Oh, this is a 10-8 round.’
“It was still a 10- 9 round on the judges’ scorecard. He outstruck me by like six strikes. And in general, I’m a guy that picks up the pace.
“And that was before, you know, Leon was off for two years before that. So for us, it was, ‘Let’s see what Leon comes out [with].
“‘Let’s see what Leon shows up today, what he’s gonna bring, what new style he brings.’
“So it was to start at a slow pace. So I’m hoping that he thinks that, ‘All right, we’re gonna go the same way.’
“And I’m even telling myself like, ‘I wanna go out here and lose this first round against Leon in this fight just to show him – all right, you won this first round now, watch what I do these next four.'”
Leon Edwards defends his title on July 27 as he faces Belal Muhammad at UFC® 304: EDWARDS vs. MUHAMMAD 2 at the Co-op Arena in Manchester live on TNT Sports 1. TNT Sports is available through its streaming destination discovery+ and across all major TV platforms. See here for more information.
Leon Edwards defends his title on July 27 as he faces Belal Muhammad at UFC® 304: EDWARDS vs. MUHAMMAD 2 at the Co-op Arena in Manchester live on TNT Sports 1. TNT Sports is available through its streaming destination discovery+ and across all major TV platforms. See here for more information.
