With reigning lightweight champion and pound-for-pound number one Islam Makhachev rumoured to be pondering a move to welterweight, it posed a quandary for Muhammad, a sometime training partner of the Russian world champion.
Would he stay at 170 pounds and face his training partner, or vacate the title and move up in search of middleweight gold? Chatting to Barstool Chicago, Muhammad revealed that it could be the latter.
“I would never fight Islam, because that’s different for me and him,” he said.
“We train together. And you know, when you’re sweating with somebody and you’re bleeding with somebody, and you train with somebody like that, it’s just a different relationship.
“So it wouldn’t be about money for me, or for him, I don’t assume. So I would never want to do that. And like, they’ve helped me so much. So for me, I would rather go up to 185 and let him just take 170 if that’s the case.
“And like, since I’ve already had to fight my way up to 170 and I’ve beaten five top 10 guys, I’m two fights away from being able to challenge at 185 and saying, ‘Hey! I want to be double champ.'”
Muhammad isn’t the biggest welterweight, which raises the question of how he’d fare at middleweight, where there are some absolute monsters cutting weight to make the 185-pound division.
There’s no doubt Muhammad would be undersized at 185, but he said that the move up in size and weight wouldn’t be an issue for him.
“185 wouldn’t be no problem,” he stated.
“And I train with bigger guys. I’ve felt their strength.
“I think 185 is probably the easiest weight class besides Khamzat (Chimaev). Like, when you look at that main event (at UFC 312), you’re like, ‘Bro, Strickland and Du Plessis suck!’
“Even at 170, I’ve fought so many taller guys.
“I don’t want to discredit Du Plessis. He’s awkward, but he wins a lot of his fights out of, like, heart and cardio. And, I beat him in heart and cardio, and skill, all day.
“And he’s not one of the biggest guys. He walks around heavy – I think he walks around like at 230 or 220, but at the end of the day, when you’re weighing at 185, the next day you’re not going to get bigger than 200. And I train with guys that are 200 all the time, so I’m not worried about it.”
