The calf kick has become an effective fight-ending weapon in MMA, but Belal Muhammad was determined to not fall victim to the technique in his most recent outing.
Muhammad (18-3 MMA, 9-3 UFC) swept the judges’ scorecards in a unanimous decision win over Dhiego Lima at UFC 258 in one of his most refined performances to date.
It was a near-flawless performance from Muhammad, who used high pressure and volume to outwork Lima. However, Lima was able to find repeated success with his calf kicks, which seemed to bother Muhammad throughout the fight.
But despite the pain of Lima’s well-executed kicks, Muhammad remained unfazed and continued pressing forward. He later admitted that simply pushing the pace was the only way he knew how to deal with them.
“The biggest thing with calf kicks is being mentally strong,” Muhammad told MMA Junkie. “I looked at guys who’ve dealt with it like (Dustin) Poirier – Jim Miller low kicked him hard – and Paul Felder, who’s fought (Edson) Barboza and who’s fought (Dan) Hooker, and their biggest thing is you’ve got to tough it out. You’ve got to be a man. That was my biggest thing. A lot of people were like, ‘Why didn’t you check it?’ I was like, ‘I checked a couple of them, but it still hurts to check calf kicks.’ You can’t check them. The biggest thing is to avoid them and try to back out of them.
“With my style, I wanted to stay in his face. I watched a lot of Khabib (Nurmagomedov) against Barboza, and Khabib stayed in his face the whole time – and that was my style. I wrote it on my phone: ‘Khabib against Barboza.’ That was the type of style I wanted to go for where I didn’t want to give him a second to breathe. So even with those calf kicks, all right – keep doing it. It wasn’t one of those where it bothered me to the point where I couldn’t walk.”
Muhammad, who spent this training camp in his hometown of Chicago, insists that his stance switches weren’t so much due to the damage from the calf kicks, but more of a strategy thing.
“Mike Valle is a very smart guy. He had me doing a lot of switching stances all camp, so I’m comfortable switching stances,” Muhammad said. “I’m normally a lefty – I write left-handed – so I could fight lefty a lot. So standing southpaw doesn’t bother me. When I was switching stances a lot, it wasn’t because I couldn’t walk or anything like that. That was just part of the game plan of switching stances – giving him something to think about.”
Belal Muhammad explains gritty approach to Dhiego Lima’s calf kicks at UFC 258
