Just one person was happier than Dricus Du Plessis after his middleweight title victory over Sean Strickland at UFC 312 – undisputed welterweight champion, Belal Muhammad.
‘Remember the Name’ has been embroiled in a bitter confrontation with Sean Strickland for several years, with the 2 UFC stars often going back-and-forth on social media with nasty intent.
After seeing his arch nemesis battered and bruised down under, Belal Muhammad would have fun on social media; although he’s now got a brand new grievance to share with the world – one which sees UFC CEO Dana White within the firing line.
Belal Muhammad is unhappy with Dana White over UFC 312 response
Welterweight champion Belal Muhammad has called out Dana White for what he perceives to be a hypocritical response to Sean Strickland’s moderately lackluster performance at UFC 312.
On the post-fight press conference in Australia, White would have fun Sean Strickland’s toughness after he fought through a painful broken nose en path to a unanimous decision defeat.
“Who’s more focused, skilled, and solid in a fight than he’s, when he gets hurt?” asked White of the media: “No protruding the tongue or ‘no, that didn’t hurt me’ or anything.
“The guy stays focused, keeps coming forward, there’s never any hint of how he acts outside of the octagon when he’s in there… Absolute skilled the entire time, it’s actually fascinating. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that with a man who acts the way in which he does leading as much as fights.”
Those comments haven’t sat well with Muhammad, especially since White was so critical of his own title-winning performance against Leon Edwards back in July 2024.
“I said that I used to be going to go in there and dominate him, and I dominated him – but then you could have like Dana White saying ‘Oh, well it wasn’t a barn burner,’” Muhammad stated during a recent interview with Barstool Chicago.
“I walked through him [Edwards], and also you’ll see Strickland this weekend not do anything and Dana White’s like ‘Ah man, he’s so tough and skilled, even when he broke his nose, he manned up’.
“I’m like ‘Bro, that was the worst title fight I’ve ever seen in my life, worst title challenger performance and yet you’re attempting to put him on a pedestal like bro, get out of here with that.”
It ought to be noted that Muhammad himself already has one eye on middleweight, even sharing an in depth breakdown of how he’d beat Dricus Du Plessis for a second UFC title.
Response to Sean Stricklands UFC 312 loss divides his own team
Only a couple of days after UFC 312, head coach Eric Nicksick would cause a stir when he questioned his cornering future with Strickland after an ‘uninspired’ performance down under.
“I feel he needs to guage what he desires to do in the game… I wanna coach world champions. My motivations are different. Simply to type of show up and do this and probably not back it up, to me, was just type of uninspiring.”
Nicksick admitted that he was “disillusioned” in Strickland for the shortage of effort shown by his star pupil within the championship rounds, reaffirming that it was simply “uninspired fighting.”
A couple of days later, Strickland would reply to those comments, acknowledging that it was unlikely that Nicksick can be in his corner again.
“I like Eric, he’s a friend of mine and he’s going to proceed to be a friend of mine – will he probably be in my corner [again]? Probably not,” he said in an Instagram post.
“I don’t fight to place belts on the wall. I don’t f—– fight because Eric desires to go do a f—— fancy podcast… Through the UFC and fight fans, you guys have modified my f—– life.
“I’ve got a variety of fights left on my contract, I really like fighting [and] I’m going back to the gym, working my a—off and ranging from f—– square one. That’s just type of how life is.”
