Belal Muhammad took aim at Khamzat Chimaev for missing weight at UFC 279.
Chimaev (12-0 MMA, 6-0 UFC) came in 7.5 pounds over the welterweight limit for his headliner against Nate Diaz, causing the top three fights on Saturday’s card at T-Mobile Arena to get a shakeup. Chimaev fought Kevin Holland in a 180-pound catchweight bout and tore through him with a first-round submission win. Muhammad has called out Chimaev on numerous occasions for a fight, but it never has materialized.
This time, he’s calling him out for his bad weight miss, making reference to former NBA standout Allen Iverson’s famous “We’re talking about practice” line when he was chastised for missing practice.
“It’ll be interesting to see what happens with Chimaev,” Muhammad said on social media. “You know, I have a lot of doctor friends in the field and we were talking about his medical condition. A lot of them are telling me it could be serious – of why he didn’t make weight. They say – it was like a scientific term – they called him fat. Yeah, I think that was it. He’s just fat. So maybe he starts eating healthier, starts being more disciplined, stops with the ‘llen Iverson practice. ‘We talking about practice?’ Because obviously he’s skilled.”
Muhammad (21-3 MMA, 12-3 UFC) wasn’t surprised to see Chimaev score the quick finish and thinks it was stylistically a bad matchup for Holland.
“(It was) pretty much what I expected,” Muhammad said. “Holland’s weakness is wrestling. Chimaev’s strength is wrestling. Holland did have a couple of really good grappling sequences, and it would have been really interesting to see if he got past the first couple of minutes, because that was all sprint for Chimaev and he kept locking in the D’Arce (choke), squeezing, squeezing and squeezing. Holland didn’t have no give up in him. He was trying to fight out, but Chimaev is just relentless with the grappling.”
Looking to emerge as the next title challenger, Muhammad meets Sean Brady at UFC 280 on Oct. 22 at Yas Island in Abu Dhabi.
