Belal Muhammad’s revenge was a long time coming, and he’s eager to savor it.
“Remember the Name” exited Co-op Live in Manchester, England, as the new UFC welterweight champion after defeating Leon Edwards in the main event of UFC 304. It was the second meeting between the two fighters, with the first ending in a no contest when an eye-poke left Muhammad unable to continue after a little over five minutes of action.
That was back in March 2021. This time, Muhammad and Edwards went a full five rounds, much of which was dominated by Muhammad’s grappling. The judges were unanimous in their verdict — a unanimous nod for Muhammad — which ended a 13-fight unbeaten stretch for Edwards.
To say that Muhammad was vindicated in their rematch would be an understatement.
“I know I’m the best fighter in the world,” Muhammad said at the evening’s post-fight press conference. “I just had to prove it and I had to show you guys. We had three years and I had to sit there and dwell on that last fight, of everybody saying, ‘Oh, he would have beat him.’ ‘ He would have won the other rounds. He would have did this, he would have did that.’ We didn’t even get started that fight.
“This fight, we got started. This is what we did. We just dominated the champion, we made it look easy. We did it better than Colby [Covington] did, better than [Kamaru] Usman did, and they’re national champ wrestlers. They’re this, this, and this. We went to Bogan High School, shout out to Lou Taylor.”
Though Edwards’ run at the top of the 170-pound division lasted only a little over 700 days, he successfully defended the title against Kamaru Usman and Colby Covington, two of his most successful contemporaries.
So would Muhammad be willing to book a trilogy next?
“Yeah, I’ll give him a rematch in three years,” Muhammad said. “Let him work his way back up. I think it was a dominant fight. There’s really no need for a rematch and I don’t think he had that long reign of a champion where he’s entitled to a rematch. For me, I came to his hometown in front of his people and in enemy territory, so it was all a layup for him. But I blocked it.”
Afterward, Muhammad and Edwards appeared to exchange pleasantries in the cage, though the broadcast did not pick up their dialogue. It was a standard post-fight exchange, Muhammad later explained. If anything, his beef has been more with social media critics than Edwards specifically.
“You always give respect after a fight, going through a battle,” Muhammad said. “For me, it was just, it took me three years to get that taste out of my mouth, three years to finally get this fight back, and I had to deal with all the haters and all the trolls and everybody saying he would have beat me, he would have did this, he would have did that, but now there’s nothing else for them to say.”
If not Edwards, then what’s next for Muhammad?
Undefeated contender Shavkat Rakhmonov looms on the horizon, with 18 career wins all by knockout or submission. Then there’s the brash Ian Machado Garry and Australian knockout artist Jack Della Maddalena.
Suffice to say, Muhammad has no shortage of potential challengers with which to build his legacy.
“I think beating this next generation of guys,” Muhammad said, when asked how he further establishes his greatness. “You have Shavkat, you have Ian Garry, you have ‘JDM.’ So there’s these young up-and-comers that everybody’s saying are killers. They’re probably still saying these guys are going to kill me next, right? So if I go out there and I walk through all these guys and then I beat the old generation, there’s really — I just want to be the guy that did everything that you said I couldn’t do.
“Then if we go up, if Dricus [du Plessis] still has the [middleweigt] title, he beats [Israel] Adesanya, he was trying to talk tough to me. I’ll go smack him around, try to get two belts.”
