Welterweight champion Belal Muhammad captured the 170-pound title at UFC 304, defeating then-titleholder Leon Edwards via unanimous decision. While he awaits his next opponent, “Remember the Name” has been entertaining potential future matchups. One opponent that Muhammad would like to face is former middleweight titleholder Sean Strickland.
Muhammad knows that he’ll have to defend the welterweight title a couple of times before challenging for the middleweight strap, but he hopes Strickland has the belt when the time comes. But even if Strickland isn’t the champion, it’s a fight that Muhammad would move up to middleweight to take.
“I would love to fight Sean. It doesn’t even have to be a belt on the line. I’d just fight him just to fight him at 185,” Muhammad told Submission Radio. “That would be the fight I’d want at 185.”
“I’d slap him around. I’d literally go in there and I’d slap him around. Sean, when I think of tough fights, Sean’s not one of them,” Muhammad continued. “I think it would be an easy fight for me. He beats a lot of guys with cardio. I have better cardio than him. He beats a lot of guys with jabs. I have better boxing than him.”
Muhammad not only believes that he’d beat Strickland, he thinks that he’d ‘make it look easy.’
“I think people just think about his last ten seconds of every fight and he goes crazy. And people are like, ‘Oh man, Sean is wild and he says wild things,’ but he fights safe. He fights to not get hit. He fights to not lose,” Muhammad said. “I think I go in there and I break him with pressure. Honestly, I’ll make it look easy.”
Strickland is expected to faced middleweight champion Dricus du Plessis in a rematch likely in the first quarter of 2025.
https://www.mmaweekly.com/news/belal-muhammad-id-slap-sean-strickland-around