UFC welterweight champion Belal Muhummad wants to make Sean Strickland pay for his words.
Muhammad (24-3 MMA, 15-3 UFC) and Strickland (29-6 MMA, 16-6 UFC) have traded barbs plenty in the past. Strickland has been open about his Islamaphobic ideology, and the Muslim champ sees his controversial comments as a sign of weakness.
Strickland rematches middleweight champion Dricus Du Plessis (22-2 MMA, 8-0 UFC) Feb. 8 in the UFC 312 headliner at Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney. The main card streams on ESPN+ pay-per-view following prelims on ESPN2 and ESPN+.
Although Muhammad wants to fight Strickland, it’s safe to say he’s not rooting for him against Du Plessis.
“I hope he loses, and I hope he gets knocked out and put unconscious and doesn’t wake up,” Muhammad told Submission Radio. “But regardless, I would always still want to move up and fight him whether he has the belt or not. That will always be a fight I say yes to. It’s personal. The guy’s just an airhead. He’s literally the definition of trailer trash. That’s what he is. So when he says all this dumb stuff, people need to make him pay for it. The Twitter people are happy to see it, and he knows it, because he can’t get attention other than saying dumb things.
“So he has to stay stupid, wild stuff because nobody cares about him without it. It’s kind of like Colby Covington. Nobody cared about him before he started saying dumb stuff. Strickland is trying to level it up even more so he could have that wow factor because his fights suck. He always talks about, ‘I’m going to kill this guy. We’re going to go to war,’ and it’s literally just a teep fest. I think he knows that he sucks, so that’s why he goes out there and he says this dumb stuff.”
Muhammad is expected to make his first welterweight title defense against Shavkat Rakhmonov. His manager Ali Abdelaziz told MMA Junkie that the title fight could take place in May.
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 312.
