One of the former opponents of Jack Della Maddalena and Belal Muhammad wasn’t surprised to see the latter unseated from the welterweight throne at UFC 315.
Muhammad’s UFC title reign ended at the very first hurdle on Saturday in Canada, where he headlined the promotion’s latest pay-per-view opposite Della Maddalena.
Though many backed ‘Remember the Name’ to utilize his superior grappling game to get the better of the Australian striker, a strong end to the fight paved the way for Della Maddalena to take Muhammad’s title.
Fans, fighters, and analysts have since been pondering what went wrong for the former champ in Montreal — and one of Muhammad’s UFC peers believes he cracked the case even before the fight.
Gilbert Burns points to Khabib Nurmagomedov’s absence as key reason for Belal Muhammad’s UFC 315 loss
Ahead of his own return to the cage this weekend at UFC Vegas 106, Gilbert Burns spoke to reporters about a variety of topics during media day.
The Brazilian was unsurprisingly asked about his former opponent’s title win at UFC 315. Burns was the victim of Della Maddalena’s crazy comeback at UFC 299 last year.
Based on his own experience of largely out-grappling the Aussie, ‘Durinho’ initially backed Muhammad to retain the title. But after seeing where the defending champ was training, Burns quickly changed his prediction.
“I kind of predicted that Jack was going to win,” Burns said. “When I see he was training with Volk [Alexander Volkanovski], I saw he already had great scrambles when we fought, good get-ups, good takedown defense. And he was even more close with Craig Jones and with Volk. I said, ‘Man, that guy is going to win.’
“Then I was seeing if Belal Muhammad was going to train with Khabib [Nurmagomedov]. But they had that thing of Islam [Makhachev] wants to move up. I assumed that was the case, ‘Okay, I’m not going [to train with them].’
“When I saw that he didn’t [go] there and [was] more in Chicago here, I said, ‘Yeah, he’s not two, three years in Dagestan this time, I think Jack’s going to win.’ Before I picked Jack, I picked Belal. But I started looking more [into it].”
Khabib Nurmagomedov helped prepare Belal Muhammad for UFC 304 title win
Khabib was widely pointed to as one of the key reasons behind Muhammad’s rise to championship status on MMA’s biggest stage in 2024.
The pair first linked up prior to the Palestinian-American’s battle with Sean Brady in Abu Dhabi. Muhammad trained under Khabib’s guidance alongside the likes of Makhachev and Umar Nurmagomedov in Dagestan.
After delivering a career-best display to knock out Sean Brady, the partnership continued to bear fruit. That continued until Muhammad fulfilled his promise by taking the UFC welterweight title from Leon Edwards in Manchester last summer.
Given the result at UFC 315, perhaps Muhammad will once again seek the help of Khabib in his pursuit of an immediate bounce-back victory.