Belal Muhammad on Beating Leon Edwards and His Road to the UFC Welterweight Title

High-Level Overview

In this JRE MMA Show episode, Joe Rogan welcomes Belal Muhammad shortly after he won the UFC welterweight title by beating Leon Edwards in Manchester, England. Joe opens by declaring that all the doubters can now be quiet, and much of the conversation celebrates how Muhammad, long overlooked and made to wait for his title shot, dismantled Edwards with relentless forward pressure. From there the pair range across the sport: fighter health and eye injuries, weight cutting, training philosophies, refereeing controversies, Joe's ideas for changing MMA's rules, legends who stayed too long, and the upcoming Mike Tyson versus Jake Paul fight.

The tone is celebratory, loose and full of fight-nerd detail, with Joe riffing on dozens of fighters and Muhammad offering an insider's view of camps, strategy and mindset. It gets more personal when Muhammad talks about starting martial arts at 23 while studying to be a lawyer, training while fasting during Ramadan, and what the title meant to Palestinians watching from refugee camps. The conversation swings between tactical breakdowns, fighter gossip and reflections on legacy and faith.

The Discussion Explores:

• The game plan that beat Leon Edwards: constant pressure and never stepping back
• The long, frustrating wait for a title shot and being passed over for UFC 300
• Fighting a main event at around 5 a.m. local time and how his team adjusted
• Eye surgeries, injuries in camp and the risk of weight cutting from a young age
• His unusual warm-up of sparring backstage and how he dials in food and energy
• Joe's proposed rule changes: covered fingertips, no standups and resuming rounds in position
• Aging fighters, knowing when to leave, and the Tyson versus Jake Paul fight
• His late start in MMA, fasting through Ramadan camps, faith, and possible next opponents

Deep Dive into Main Ideas

The Plan That Beat Leon Edwards

Muhammad explains that his team studied Edwards's fights with Colby Covington and Kamaru Usman and concluded that Edwards is an expert at managing distance and setting his own pace, kicking and moving. The answer was to make it the dirtiest, hardest fight possible: be in his face from the first second, stay out of kicking range, punch him in the mouth and take him down whenever an opening appeared. Even as the referee checked the fighters were ready, Muhammad says he was already walking forward.

The preparation was drilled in. Across camp, he estimates he took two to three thousand body kicks and stepped forward on each one, with his coach yelling if he ever retreated. He literally wrote the mantra down: "Do not take a step back." He also sparred daily with a teammate he considers one of the best strikers in the UFC, so nothing Edwards threw would surprise him. Joe praises his boxing volume and cardio, saying he looked better than ever. Muhammad notes that critics underestimate him because he lacks many knockouts, yet he beat Sean Brady and Gilbert Burns on the feet. His coach, true to form, spent the post-fight critique on the one big moment Edwards had in the last round.

The Long Wait and the 5 a.m. Title Fight

Muhammad describes the frustration after beating Gilbert Burns, when he was told he was guaranteed next but kept waiting. A fight with Usman was discussed, then fell through; Edwards seemed to look past him; and for UFC 300 the fight was reportedly offered to other contenders, who declined because of Ramadan, while Muhammad says he has fought multiple times during Ramadan. He believes the UFC wanted a star-power shock for that card. Joe says true MMA purists all felt Muhammad deserved the shot, and jokes that most online hate comes from a small number of people with too much time on their hands.

The event in England ran on American pay-per-view time, so the first prelim started around 1 a.m. and Muhammad's main event near 5 or 5:30 a.m. Joe calls this bananas and contrary to optimal performance. Muhammad's team arrived a week early, found a gym and trained around 3 or 4 a.m., using light-emitting glasses at sunset to fight off sleepiness and melatonin to sleep during the day. He says he actually hoped the crowd would be exhausted and drunk, since they would probably boo him anyway, and notes that people started leaving in the fourth round, which he took as a good sign.

Injuries, Eyes and the Cost of Weight Cutting

Muhammad has had three eye surgeries. After one fight he felt something in his eye and later learned he had a detached lens. The worst required him to keep his head face-down or sideways for about eight weeks, sleeping in a massage chair and watching TV through an angled mirror, calling it the worst two months of his life. He admits avoiding doctors and training through a black dot in his vision until it became a black sheet during sparring, forcing emergency surgery. Joe recounts a friend who lost much of his vision because a detached retina was not diagnosed quickly, and they marvel at fighters who competed with one eye.

On weight cutting, they criticize TJ Dillashaw's drop to 125 pounds, which Joe believes left him starving and damaged, and share a story of a sushi chef whose father made him cut weight for wrestling from age six, leading to heart surgery. Muhammad now walks around about 185 to 190 pounds in camp and lives with a chef, Ian Larios, for five weeks, who feeds him carbohydrates like potatoes and eggs before training and tracks his weight so Muhammad never has to look at the scale. He says he trains far better this way than when he used to skip breakfast.

How He Prepares: Sparring Backstage and Dialing In

Unusually, Muhammad spars in the back before his fights with a trusted training partner wearing shin guards and big gloves. For the Edwards fight, the partner threw about 50 hard kicks at him so that his arms, legs and body already felt the fight when he walked out. He wants to feel like it is already the third round, rather than starting slowly after hitting pads. He says his coach tries to mimic fight conditions in everything, so he keeps notes on what warm-ups, drills and meals left him feeling best; his current go-to before training is white rice, eggs and turkey bacon.

He also talks about mindset. Early on he tried to hype himself up with rap music and cursing, but his coach told him being calm was good and he should not pretend to be something he is not. His strength and conditioning with Matt Murphy involves heavy compound lifts three days a week with lighter, higher-rep accessory work, plus lots of swimming, which he calls a full-body workout that exhausts newcomers. Joe, meanwhile, champions the Marinovich-style approach used for BJ Penn and by Nick Curson, who argue that elite fighters already know how to fight and should spend camp building an unstoppable gas tank through plyometrics.

Joe's Rule Changes and Refereeing Controversies

Joe revisits Demian Maia's fight with Kamaru Usman, when a referee separated them while Maia had a hook in and was working toward a choke in the first round, calling it one of the greatest travesties in the sport. Muhammad adds that one referee decision can change a whole career. That leads to Joe's proposals. First, cover the fingertips of MMA gloves to prevent eye pokes. Second, no standups: "No standups, he says, unless there is an injury or foul. Third, resume each round in the exact position it ended, because It's one fight. That's five rounds." He argues fights already begin standing, which favors strikers, so a grappler who earns a dominant position should keep it. He even imagines fighting on a large matted floor in the middle of an arena with no cage, so takedowns and getting up must happen without a wall.

They also discuss early stoppages such as Jared Cannonier's loss to Nassourdine Imavov, and a gruesome ONE Championship heel hook by Mikey Musumeci in which the opponent refused to tap and suffered torn ligaments and a broken ankle. Muhammad says he taps immediately to leg locks in practice.

Legends, Aging and Knowing When to Leave

Joe and Muhammad lament that fans remember great fighters only at the end of their careers: Tyron Woodley for his Jake Paul fights, Tony Ferguson for recent losses, BJ Penn for his decline. They praise those who left on top, such as Khabib Nurmagomedov, who retired undefeated after promising his mother, Andre Ward and Marvin Hagler. Joe argues that past 40 the body simply cannot do what the mind wants, though heavyweights may age more slowly, citing George Foreman and Bernard Hopkins winning big fights in their 40s. They also discuss Alexander Volkanovski's mistake of taking an Islam Makhachev rematch on 10 days' notice, which Joe believes compromised him.

On Mike Tyson fighting Jake Paul, Joe says he wishes the fight were not happening given the age gap, but fully supports Tyson's right to do it. He is not convinced by pad-work clips and wants to see full rounds of sparring. He recounts Tyson's origins under Cus D'Amato, who took him in at 13, when Joe says Tyson already weighed 190 pounds, and hypnotized him to believe that only the task existed. He also credits Jake Paul as a genuinely good, improving boxer.

From Law Student to Champion, and Fasting Through Camp

Muhammad did not start martial arts until 23. He had two years of high school wrestling under coach Lewis Taylor, then saw Taylor fighting in a newspaper while Muhammad was studying to become a lawyer. He messaged him, started training at his gym near his mother's house, and took an amateur fight after about two months. He promised his parents he would return to school after his first loss, which never came before the UFC. Taylor, whom the UFC deemed too old, later won the PFL middleweight tournament and a million dollars at 41 as a big underdog, and taught Muhammad patience during his wait.

Muhammad has done multiple camps while fasting for Ramadan, training at his normal times with no food or water from before sunrise. He says the body adjusts after three or four days and that the spiritual focus makes him feel he can push harder than opponents. After sunset he treats every night like rehydrating from a weight cut, targeting about a gallon and a half of water with protein and electrolytes. Now that he is champion, he says he no longer has to say yes to everything: "But now I am the opportunity." He admits he once took the Gilbert Burns fight on three weeks' notice during Ramadan and wondered why he risked a nine-fight win streak, and Joe urges him to keep his fighting spirit but choose fights wisely.

What's Next and What the Belt Means

On his next opponent, Muhammad sees Kamaru Usman as the bigger name for legacy and pay-per-view, and Shavkat Rakhmonov as the undefeated bogeyman that would silence doubters, though he thinks Usman is the tougher fight. He says his team strategizes each opponent's weaknesses, and he is willing to move up to middleweight later. He describes the belt at first as a feeling of "I told you so," after three years of being told Edwards would beat him. But he says the deeper meaning was carrying the Palestinian flag with the title, receiving messages from people in Gaza, including children in a refugee camp watching the fight. He credits his coach Mike Valle, who runs a small gym and houses fighters from Chile and Mexico without charging rent, and describes a surprise parade in Manchester after the fight.

Conclusion

This episode is a victory lap with substance. Belal Muhammad lays out exactly how preparation, strategy and refusal to take a backward step beat a champion many thought he could not touch, while Joe Rogan uses the occasion to celebrate the sport's complexity and argue for rules that reward real fighting. Beneath the fight talk runs a story of patience and faith: a man who started at 23, waited years for his shot, fought at dawn in enemy territory, and now wants to use the belt to inspire others, especially people back home and in Palestine, to believe their dream is possible.

This is a summary of "JRE MMA Show #162 with Belal Muhammad" from The Joe Rogan Experience, giving you the GIST so you can decide if you want the REST.