Belal Muhammad trashes “pathetic” and “weak-minded” Leon Edwards for wanting title shot after No Contest

UFC welterweight Belal Muhammad trashed “pathetic” and “weak-minded” Leon Edwards for wanting to get a title shot after their No Contest.

Muhammad suffered a nasty eye poke in the early goings of the second round of his main event fight against Edwards at this past Saturday’s UFC Vegas 21 event. Unfortunately for everyone involved, the eye poke was so severe that the cage-side doctor and referee Herb Dean were forced to wave off the fight and call it a No Contest (accidental eye poke). But despite not actually winning the fight, Edwards has said since the fight ended that he wants to get a UFC welterweight title shot, and Muhammad doesn’t agree with that whatsoever.

Speaking to TMZ Sports, Muhammad trashed Edwards for his desire to fight for the UFC welterweight title next despite him being the one who poked Muhammad in the eye.

“My message to him is, if you’re a man, take the rematch. I literally took this fight on three weeks’ notice coming off of a fight, coming off of injuries, didn’t care about them, to give you the respect because I know you needed a fight and an opponent. So I sat there, went through another camp, went through another weight cut, made championship weight to give you this fight. I promoted the fight, I pushed it. So give me the respect as a man, as a fighter, as a martial artist, so let’s do this. That wasn’t a real win. That wasn’t really a fight. We literally had one round. If you’re a man, if you’re a real contender, if you think you’re a real champion, then you gotta beat everybody. You gotta beat me to earn the title shot,” Muhammad said.

“You think you can earn the title shot off of a No Contest? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. You didn’t have a win in 600 days, so you don’t deserve a title shot, you deserve a rematch. You didn’t win anything. Ok, you had a 10-9 first round, is that what you’re saying you won with? We literally didn’t even get warmed up yet. This is a five-round fight, buddy. So for you to be that happy about one round, it shows how pathetic and weak-minded you are. It just shows how I was going to break you. Because for you to be that excited about one round, it just shows me what kind of person you are.”

It will be interesting to see what the UFC does with Edwards and Muhammad next. A rematch does make sense, but if Muhammad is going to be on the shelf for a while with his eye injury then the promotion’s matchmakers may look to go a different route for both men. However, Muhammad does have a point about it being hard to justify giving someone a title shot off of a No Contest, so perhaps the promotion will look to book the rematch.

Do you agree with Belal Muhammad that Leon Edwards should give him the rematch?