Belal Muhammad says that he only has himself to blame for no longer being the UFC’s welterweight champion.
Muhammad was defeated for the first time since January 2019 in the UFC 315 main event earlier this month, losing by clear-cut unanimous decision to Australia’s Jack Della Maddalena, snapping an 11-fight unbeaten streak in the process.
And now that the smoke has cleared from their 25-minute clash in Montreal, Muhammad says he regrets straying from the gameplan designed by his coaches and feels that he was too eager to be drawn into a firefight with one of the division’s best boxers.
“I think I have the best team in the world, some of the best coaches in the world, and we go into every fight with a strategy and idea of what we want to do,” he said on his Remember the Show podcast, as reported by MMA Fighting.
“Obviously, for us, what our strategy was was to take down Jack. It wasn’t to go blow-for-blow with him, brawl-for-brawl with him.”
Prior to the bout, Muhammad had talked up gains he had made in the striking department — with claims of so-called ‘Canelo hands’ doing the rounds in the press.
“It’s a weird moment when you’re training something so much and you’re getting better at something, which I think my striking has grown so much and I’ve always said it.,” he explained. “When I said that in the lead-up, I wasn’t lying about it. ‘Bro, I can box with him, I can strike with him. I’m not afraid to strike with him.’ And I went out there and I just felt good.
“But it came down to one round, maybe one exchange that could’ve swayed the judges one way, so was my game plan wrong? I could’ve went the other way. Could it have been an easier fight? It could’ve, but at the end of the day, I love to fight.”
Muhammad, though, says that he has designs on returning to the summit of the welterweight division, even if that path may potentially be complicated by his friend and training partner Belal Muhmmad being the next man up for Della Maddalena.
“There’s nothing in me that’s like, ‘I’m done now, I’m sad now, let’s see what YouTubers are out there.’ I’m still chasing legacy, I’m still chasing GSP,” he said. “GSP lost his belt and he gained it back. So for my mentality, it’s, ‘We’re still here.’ I don’t care how old they are or how old they think I am, go in there and beat me. And there’s not a lot of guys that are able to do that.”
