Alexander Volkanovski claims he couldn’t believe it when Belal Muhammad raged at him on social media over a small misunderstanding.
‘The Great’ insists he didn’t mean to annoy the welterweight contender, and thus says he couldn’t get his head around how things were blown so out of proportion.
Alexander Volkanovski was shocked Belal Muhammad got ‘so salty’
On Saturday evening at UFC 304 inside the 23,500-seater Co-op Live in Manchester, UK, Belal Muhammad will go head-to-head with Leon Edwards for welterweight supremacy.
With the first fight ending in a no contest after ‘Rocky’ accidentally poked the American in the eye, both men are excited to set the record straight.
Edwards is determined to prove that a conclusive ending was just around the corner, while Muhammad is adamant that there’s no way the Brit is capable of hearing the final bell with him this time around.
Throughout the build-up to the rematch, the challenger has ramped up the trash talk, refusing to shy away from a war of words, which has prompted Alexander Volkanovski to open up about his own experience with ‘Remember the Name’.
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He told MMA Fighting: “We were doing a fight reaction… Watching the [UFC] fights, and [Muhammad] was doing it somewhere else. The production teams were trying to get us in contact; they gave him my number, and he tried to call me.
“I didn’t answer; my phone is always on silent mode. But he just assumed I was knocking him, that I wasn’t answering his calls on purpose.
“He goes straight on Twitter and goes, ‘Max [Holloway] is gonna flog you anyway.’ And stuff like this. I ended up calling him back ’cause I saw [the missed call]. I hadn’t seen the tweet yet, and I’m like, ‘Hey man, sorry I missed your call.’
“It was on FaceTime, and he was like, ‘Don’t worry about the tweets. I was just joking!’ I’m like, ‘What do you mean?’ I go look at it, and I’m like, ‘You really got that salty and angry because I missed your call?’ I shook his hand after that, obviously I’m not holding any malice.
“Now he’s trying to play on that now… If you’re gonna go down that route, then you may as well own it.”
Belal Muhammad compared to Canelo Alvarez
As the fight with Edwards has drawn closer, the noise coming from the Muhammad camp has grown louder.
While the Englishman was comprehensively winning the first fight, his rival is convinced that he’s going to make their second clash look easy.
In the years since their previous meeting, Muhammad has made monumental leaps, picking up fantastic victories over Stephen Thompson and Gilbert Burns.
However, with just five knockouts in his entire career, his striking has received some criticism. But rumors on the grapevine are that he’s drastically improved in this area.
While most still wouldn’t put the wrestler on the same level as Canelo Alvarez, one man certainly does.
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