Kamal Usman says there is no love lost between him and UFC welterweight champion Belar Muhammad.
Both men have reserved fights. Muhammad hosts UFC 315 this Saturday with his first title defense against Jack Della Madalena, but Usman is back for the first time in nearly two years, facing Joaquin Buckley in the main event at UFC Atlanta.
Since Muhammad won the title, Usman said that the new champions began taking his social media objectives and that Usman would rather talk about it. Things got hot, but no other information has been revealed elsewhere, but things have come to the point that if you meet Muhammad behind the scenes at a UFC event, it could possibly pop out.
“Maybe,” Usman told ESPN MMA. “Obviously, I’m very flat, especially when I’m outside the cage – but for the last two years, years, half, I don’t have the thickness of it. There’s nothing. There’s a transition.
“But I’m not like that, so when you’re at the thickness of it, you’re on guard. Even me and Georges St. Pierre had this conversation he expressed it to me.
Muhammad has been undefeated in his past 11 fights and rose to the ranks in the division before winning the title shot at UFC 304 this July. “Remember” ruled Leon Edwards for the first time to win UFC gold.
While such a long winning streak is impressive, title defense is an important statistic when it comes to being ranked among the greatest greats of all time in the division. Usman was asked if Muhammad had the ability to participate in Matt Hughes, Georges St-Pierre, himself, and won the generation as champion at 170 pounds.
“I think so,” Usman explained. “I think so, so you have to be sufficient everywhere to actually base your Dabyon. In a division where you see (title) changes over and over again, the champions usually lack some skill.
“And now, Beral (like Hughes, St. Pierre, myself) is in a place where he can do everything pretty good. We’ve never really seen the power of his punch, but he gives potential working time to be confident in that aspect, so we might be able to see it. If you can overcome these different kinds of challenges, like Ian (Machado) Garry, and Shavkat Rakhmonov, you can say that you’ve built a lovely kind of heritage for yourself.