Belal Muhammad

“For me, I'm always looking ahead.”

“I want to fight the guys that people think can beat me.”

“I'm always going to watch the champion. I'm always going to look and see what I would need to do to adjust to beat the guy. I think most fighters do that.”

“I can wrestle with the best.”

“That's the difficult part of the fight game. Guys sit and choose their opponents.”

“When you get to the top five, if you're not fighting with a strategy, you're going to lose to the good guys.”

“A lot of people don't understand what being a Muslim is and they don't understand what it means. You just see what you see on the news. But meeting someone like me in person, a Muslim, they're like, 'Oh, I thought all you people were mean' or something like that. It's funny. I try to change their mindset.”

“I think that my team is the best at reading opponents, and understanding where their weaknesses are, and how to beat them.”

“I don't like to overthink things.”

“Khabib Nurmagomedov is the next GSP.”

“I've got a very good team behind me. We're very good at figuring puzzles out and putting our camp towards fight-specific things. We're not training just to train. We know what we're doing and we set up the camp to work toward beating this one guy and this one style.”

“I always think I need to be better than what I am. If I train twice a day, I think I need to go one more time. I'm not going hard enough.”

“Three fights without the fans was kind of weird but I got used to it by the end of it.”

“Wrestlers, grapplers, strikers, I'm here to fight the best of the best. And I'm going to beat them.”

“If I'm not going to get a title fight, just give me the fights that really get me excited. Give me like a Sean Strickland - somebody that I dislike, somebody that I hate, that would be fun to punch in the mouth.”

“I'm a guy that can compete with anyone in the division and a guy that can beat the champion.”

“I knew that I wasn't going to be the guy they were going to give me one fight and then I would get the title.”

“I have to fight for everything I've got and I'm willing to keep doing it.”

“I like discipline and respect, that's what martial arts is for me and that's what my religion is about.”

“I'm only going to keep getting better.”