Belal Muhammad gave fans a glimpse into what it’s like to train with UFC Hall of Famer Khabib Nurmagomedov following his UFC 280 win.
On Saturday, ‘Remember The Name’ delivered a near-perfect performance against previously undefeated welterweight contender Sean Brady. Knocking out Brady in spectacular fashion, Muhammad spoke to ESPN’s Marc Raimondi, discussing his training camp leading up to the UFC 280 bout, specifically what it was like being coached by the former lightweight champion.
“This guy doesn’t understand tired. We’re going from sparring to grappling, and then he tells me ‘Come in the cage’ and he’s putting me on the fence and taking me down at will and just, like, drowning me,” Muhammad said. I’m sitting there dead and all of a sudden at the end of it, they’re like, ‘Well, OK, you got three minutes of planks.’
“I’m sitting there, dripping, I look to my right and I see Islam there. He tells me, ‘Khabib does not know tired.’ There needs to be some rest in between because the practices are so hard that my body ended up breaking down halfway through.”
Amazing finish from @bullyb170 against a 15-0 young hungry fighter in Sean Brady pic.twitter.com/I8XCI7bU7b
— schwick (@schwick6) October 27, 2022
Belal Muhammad Calls Khabib Nurmagomedov the Kobe Bryant of Mixed Martial Arts
Khabib Nurmagomedov demanded greatness from himself every time he stepped inside the Octagon in his highly-regarded MMA career. ‘The Eagle’ expects nothing less from those he trains, including protege Islam Makhachev who fulfilled a long-prophesized destiny by capturing the UFC lightweight title in the UFC 280 headliner.
“He demands greatness from you,” Muhammad continued. “I just watched (The Redeem Team) and how Kobe Bryant would go to the gym at 4 a.m. and it made the other guys work that much harder. Khabib is the same way where you want to do extra for him. You want to push yourself much harder for him because he doesn’t have to be there. He’s got all the money in the world, he’s got all the accolades in the world, he’s been a champion.
“He’s accomplished it all, but he’s giving you his time, his knowledge. Even when we’d do warm-ups and he’d tell us, ‘You guys aren’t pushing hard enough. What are you guys doing? You gotta do it again.’ So we have to go again. There’ll be some guys that’ll come in tired, and he’ll take their phone from them at night, and he’ll be like, ‘You need to go to sleep on time.’”
With his UFC 280 victory, Belal Muhammad improved to 22-3-0 in his MMA career and moved up one spot to the No. 4 position on the promotion’s welterweight rankings. With eight straight victories inside the Octagon, many believe Muhammad is the next man in line for a welterweight title shot.
Do you believe Belal Muhammad should be the man to face the winner of Leon Edwards vs. Kamaru Usman III?
