'He's a joke': Belal Muhammad laughs off Leon Edwards' coach's UFC 304 pre-fight injury claims

Belal Muhammad ain’t buying it.

Leon Edwards’ coach recently said his fighter injured his back in the lead-up to UFC 304 in Manchester, England, and that’s why he wasn’t able to retain his UFC welterweight title. Muhammad (24-3 MMA, 15-3 UFC), who took the belt from Edwards (22-4 MMA, 14-3 UFC), laughed at those claims and took a shot at Edwards’ coach while at it.

“He’s a joke,” Edwards told MMA Junkie. “He was a joke before the fight as a coach, and he’s a joke after the fight. It’s funny that they all have different excuses. Leon was like, ‘Oh, I couldn’t sleep,’ and now his coach came out with, ‘Oh, his back was hurting.’ Get on the same page. If you’re going to come up with an excuse, talk to each other beforehand. … They’re trying to figure it out, but we had the perfect blueprint to beat him up, it was ‘Bully’ proof, not (Kamaru) Usman.

“I said it was going to be easy, and I made it look easy. He wasn’t comfortable with me in the cage, and I made him look like that. We know how it was going to end up, and we knew he was going to come up with excuses.”

Muhammad was dominant against Edwards and left no doubt he was better than Edwards that night in Manchester. Muhammad said he was confident he could get the job done and felt no pressure prior to the event.

“It felt different because there wasn’t the stress of like, ‘I need to win this to get the opportunity to fight for the title,'” Edwards said. “Everything was, ‘I have to fight for the title. I have to get this shot. I have to get this shot.’ And finally, once we got the shot, that was the sense of relief. We finally earned our shot. They gave it to us. It took us forever to get it. It’s here now. Now there’s nothing else to be afraid of. This is our moment.”