BELAL MUHAMMAD feared his career was over after the premature end of his first meeting with Leon Edwards.
The Palestinian-American faced the welterweight king in a last-minute Covid clash at the UFC Apex facility in Las Vegas in March 2021.
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Edwards looked to dust off the cobwebs against the Chicago clubber after a nearly two-year hiatus, which was largely due to pandemic.
But their comeback clash ended in an agonizing No Contest after an accidental eye poke left Muhammad unable to continue.
It soon became clear and evident that Maomé was not looking for a way out, as many fighters had done in the past, as he was overcome with emotion.
But what wasn’t apparent to the millions of MMA fans watching at home was that he couldn’t see anything other than a black eye that he had already had trouble with earlier in his career.
“I literally thought I was blind,” Muhammad told SunSport in an exclusive interview earlier this month. “The hardest thing I had to do was deal with eye surgery.
“When you have eye surgery, it’s the most depressing thing because you can’t do anything.
“You have to be in a certain headspace for, you know, four or five months. You can’t coach and I love coaching.”
Muhammad couldn’t help but think of the time doctors told him to give up, when he first injured his eye while lying in agony on the octagon canvas.
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He continued: “I love working out and the doctor is saying, ‘This is a stupid decision if you’re going to fight again.
“You’re like, ‘Bro, this is all I know. This, this is what I am. There is no plan B.’
“And in that fight, in that moment, it was like, ‘Bro, you can’t see anything.
“You’re shocked and think, ‘Man, he was right. The doctor said this was going to happen, and now it’s happened. You’re like candy.”
It took nearly an hour for vision to slowly begin to return to Muhammad’s right eye. And to say he felt an enormous sense of relief would be an understatement,
He said: “Literally, it took like 30 or 40 minutes after [happened] to finally see some light from there.
“You’re like, ‘Oh my God, I still have vision. I can still see.’ It was like, it was hard, man.”
He may be well over three years removed from the ordeal, but Muhammad, to this day, still feels “afraid” when recalling the most harrowing moment of his career.
“At that moment, it was like one of those heartbreaking, heartbreaking moments for me,” he said.
“Like you said, when you bring back the memory with that, it still puts fear in me.”
Muhammad and Edwards will renew their rivalry a week on Sunday morning in the main event of UFC 304 in Manchester but this time as challenger and champion
Edwards, 32, has been adamant in his belief that the fight would only go one way after he hit Muhammad with a perfect head kick in the first round.
But Muhammad – who has won the last five in a row – insists the Brummie are mistaken in believing they would have won the fight by stoppage.
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Edwards may be guilty of underestimating Muhammad’s much-improved skill set when they face off in the all-new Cooperative Live arena.
And Muhammad reckons overconfidence could end up being a fatal blow to the Brummie’s title reign.
“I hope he leaves with the same mentality,” he said. “I hope he thinks it will be an easy fight.
“Even in that first fight, when you’re going back and watching it, he had a moment. It was a kick to the head.
“There was nothing else in that first round where you thought, ‘Oh, this is a 10-8 round.’
“It was still a 10-9 round on the judges’ scorecards. He beat me by six strikes. And in general, I’m a fast-paced guy.
“And that was before, you know, Leon was gone for two years before that. So for us it was, ‘Let’s see what Leon comes out with. [with].
“’Let’s see what Leon shows up today, what he’s going to bring, what new style he brings.’
“So it was to start at a slow pace. I hope he thinks, ‘Okay, let’s follow suit.’
“And I’m even saying to myself, ‘I want to come out here and lose the first round against Leon in this fight just to show him – okay, you won the first round now, see what I do. next four.'”
Leon Edwards defends his title on July 27th when he faces Belal Muhammad at UFC® 304: EDWARDS vs. Cooperative Arena in Manchester live on TNT Sports 1. TNT Sports is available through your streaming destination Discovery+ and on all major TV platforms. look here For more informations.
Leon Edwards defends his title on July 27th when he faces Belal Muhammad at UFC® 304: EDWARDS vs. MUHAMMAD 2 at the Co-op Arena in Manchester live on TNT Sports 1. TNT Sports is available via its streaming destination Discovery+ and on all major TV platforms. look here For more informations.
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