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Belal Muhammad defeated Leon Edwards by unanimous decision in the main event of UFC 304 to capture the UFC Welterweight Championship.
The newly crowned champion is willing to fight Edwards for a third time, but Muhammad says Edwards must wait three years first.
“Yeah, I’ll give him a rematch in three years,” Muhammad said at the post-fight press conference (transcript via Alexander K. Lee of MMA Fighting). “Let him work his way back up. I think it was a dominant fight. There’s really no need for a rematch and I don’t think he had that long reign of a champion where he’s entitled to a rematch. For me, I came to his hometown in front of his people and in enemy territory, so it was all a layup for him. But I blocked it.”
Edwards and Muhammad first fought to a no contest due to an accidental eye poke at UFC Fight Night 187 in March of 2021, with their second fight happening over three years later.
Muhammad is also looking at defending the title against other contenders outside of another fight with Edwards.
“I think beating this next generation of guys,” Muhammad said. “You have Shavkat, you have Ian Garry, you have ‘JDM.’ So there’s these young up-and-comers that everybody’s saying are killers. They’re probably still saying these guys are going to kill me next, right? So if I go out there and I walk through all these guys and then I beat the old generation, there’s really — I just want to be the guy that did everything that you said I couldn’t do. Then if we go up, if Dricus [du Plessis] still has the [middleweigt] title, he beats [Israel] Adesanya, he was trying to talk tough to me. I’ll go smack him around, try to get two belts.”
