LOS ANGELES – UFC welterweight champion Belal Muhammad is targeting Shavkat Rakhmonov in the first half of the year.
Muhammad (24-3 MMA, 15-3 UFC) was expected to face Rakhmonov (19-0 MMA, 7-0 UFC) last month at UFC 310, but a bone infection in his foot forced him out. He recently has been spending time training with Khabib Nurmagomedov’s team at the UFC Performance Institute in Las Vegas, which has sparked his desire to compete again.
Muhammad’s manager, Ali Abdelaziz, told MMA Junkie that Muhammad should return in May, which works for the champ.
“Right after Ramadan, I think. May, June, is the perfect timeline for me,” Muhammad told MMA Junkie. “I started last week training with those guys down in Vegas. That was a nice shock to the body. It got me awoken. It let me know, ‘All right, we’ve got to get in shape-shape. So it just feels good to be training. I was at the PI. I was doing therapy everyday over there, so my body is finally getting back to normal and finally getting back to where it was.”
When Muhammad withdrew from UFC 310, Rakhmonov faced Ian Machado Garry in a five-round welterweight bout. Rakhmonov was able to fend off Machado Garry’s late surge, going the distance for the first time in his career.
Many think Rakhmonov lost his aura of invincibility after that fight, but Muhammad already had a plan in place prior.
“I was confident before the fight,” Muhammad said. “So now you’re just giving me an extra 25 minutes to watch you and see what you do. Everybody thinks he’s a RoboCop, he’s a robot, he’s just going to walk through you. The fact that he didn’t walk through him (Machado Garry), everyone thinks he sucks now, but we don’t look at that. We look at patterns.
“We look at our strategy and what we thought before the fight was going to work, and we saw it play out in that fight, and we think is still going to work. I don’t think he’s ever fought anybody like me. There’s not a lot of guys who ever fought a guy like me, so once you get into the cage with me, it’s different. He’s going to get into the cage with me, realize it’s different, and there’s levels to this. I’m going to show the world why I’m the best welterweight in the world.”
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