Sean Strickland has been warned that he would be a comfortable win for a newly-crowned UFC champion.
The cocky middleweight dethroned Israel Adesanya to win the world title last year, but lost the belt in his first defence against Dricus Du Plessis in January. He has since earned back his number one contender spot by beating Paulo Costa at UFC 302.
But welterweight champion Belal Muhammad believes that even despite the size difference that he could comfortably defeat Strickland if the pair were to fight. They have had a long-standing rivalry, and he would like to settle it in the octagon.
- Who is Sean Strickland? Get to know the controversial former UFC Middleweight champion
Belal Muhammad believes Sean Strickland would be an ‘easy fight’
Newly-crowned welterweight champion Belal Muhammad has been courting a number of different challengers for his belt since beating Leon Edwards at UFC 304 in July. But one surprise name he mentioned in a recent interview was middleweight Sean Strickland.
“I would love to fight Sean, doesn’t even have to be a belt on the line,” Muhammad told Submission Radio. “I would fight him just to fight him at 185lb. That would be the fight I’d want at 185lb, I’d have four top five wins.
“I don’t think he’s going to be touching gold any more, dude sucks. I’d slap him around, I would literally go in there and slap him around. When I think of tough fights, Sean’s not one of them. I think he would be an easy fight for me, he beats a lot of guys with cardio and I have better cardio than him.
“He beats a lot of guys with jabs, I have better boxing than him. He beats guys with teeps but those guys fight him a certain way, they don’t fight him smart, Costa backed up the whole time and just took those teep kicks, even Adesanya backed up the whole time.
“Even that was not a great fight, he fights safe, he fights to not get hit and he fights not to lose. So I think I go in there and break him with pressure and honestly I’d make it look easy.”
Sean Strickland and Belal Muhammad share years-long rivalry
The world champion duo have shared a years-long rivalry mainly stemming from Strickland’s relentless trolling of all UFC fighters on social media. There is a famous video of the middleweight goading Muhammad while they’re at the gym, and it seems the feud has not thawed since.
Last year, Strickland explained to James Lynch: “F***ing Belal, the thing is with Belal is the motherf***er just runs his mouth on the f***ing tweet tweet… I’m like ‘Belal the fight will never happen, we’ve talked to UFC about it, it’s not happening.
“If you don’t like me and you want to scrap, f***ing here I am, I’m here. We can do gloves or no gloves, I don’t give a f***, I’ll beat the f*** out of you. It is kind of annoying Belal, shut the f*** up dude. Go back to Miami and tweet about Palestine and shut the f*** up.”
Belal Muhammad details plans for first title defence
However, before any of that takes place, Belal Muhammad must first defend his welterweight belt for the first time. It is believed that Shavkat Rakhmonov is the next contender for the belt, although former champion Kamaru Usman is also in contention despite three straight losses.
“I said I want to fight in December, why would I want to turn around in 70 days and fight on October 7?” Muhammad said during the Submission Radio interview when quizzed about Rakhmonov’s recent claims that he is avoiding a fight between the pair.
“That doesn’t make any sense, why wouldn’t I want to fight in Abu Dhabi a couple of weeks after that in front of my crowd? So I think that was just him blowing smoke out there, trying to create a narrative and create a storyline.
“Even in general with the way he tries to create a storyline, people can say what they want to say but his last one was against Wonderboy [Stephen Thompson]. So it’s not like people are like ‘he deserves it next’.
“He’s undefeated, yeah, but Ian Machado Garry is undefeated too and he just beat a crazy puzzle in MVP, so there isn’t a clear number one contender.”
- Who is Dana White? All you need to know about the CEO and President of the UFC