Belal Muhammad | Not Satisfied

When athletes falter, there is an instinctive tendency to want to pull things apart and make considerable changes to remedy things, especially when it’s more than one loss. The pressure to do so is even greater when you’re competing at the highest level possible because the cost of each loss is higher, and it’s why you frequently see major shifts happen after a champion is forced to abdicate the throne and starts to stumble.

Rather than pack his bags and make major changes, Muhammad has stayed put, continuing to work with Mike Valle and the criminally underrated camp they’ve built in the Chicagoland area, focusing on tinkering around the edges and making small adjustments instead of opting for a “tear it down and start over” approach.

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“I’m doing a new strength and conditioning program, working with a different guy — shout out to Kyle Bracey who has helped me out a lot,” Muhammad said. “A lot of the time I would overtrain — I always want to do more, more, more — and he just made it about specific things, smaller things: not killing yourself every workout, not overdoing things, thinking about recovery, pushing recovery and I was never a guy that cared about any of that.

“So it’s just being smarter with that, and I brought in Miguel Baeza this camp, who is the perfect body type — he’s a monster and I hope he gets back to training, makes it back to the UFC because that dude’s a killer; working with him gives me a lot of confidence. It’s just making little, small changes, little, small movements.”

For his last couple of fights, middleweight contender Brendan Allen has been making the trip to work with Valle, Muhammad, and the Chicago squad, earning victories in each of his first two appearances since shifting his training camp north from Kill Cliff FC in South Florida. The veteran welterweight has known Allen since he was in the early days of his career on the regional circuit, when the two trained under the late Duke Roufus in Milwaukee, and have always remained close.

Now, for the first time in their careers, they’re training alongside one another and competing in back-to-back fights to close out this weekend’s show.

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“It’s amazing to share with my brother,” Muhammad said. “I’ve seen him since he was in LFA and he was at Roufusport; before he got into the UFC and he was on the way up. When he told me ‘I’m gonna be on the same card as you,’ I was pumped. I know he’s gonna start it off, get the momentum going, but all week has been good energy, good vibes.

“Knowing that he’s suffering with me, it makes the moment that much better, that much sweeter, and it’s gonna make Saturday a memory that we won’t forget,” he added. “We’re gonna look at this 50 years down the line and still talk, still boys and be like, ‘Remember that time we were on the card together?’”

After Allen shares the Octagon with Edmen Shahbazyan, Muhammad and Bonfim will stand across from one another in a critical matchup in the 170-pound weight class and classic pairing in terms of the narrative and optics at play.

While Muhammad is the established former champion and Top 5 mainstay, Bonfim is the rising star being given the toughest assignment of his career; a “prove you’re ready to be a contender” opportunity after pushing his winning streak to four with a second-round stoppage win over Randy Brown in his first main event assignment last November.

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It’s a pairing we see time and again, up and down the divisional ladder, and while Muhammad is fully aware of the role he’s inhabiting in this dynamic, he has no intention of being a stepping stone for the Dana White’s Contender Series grad on Saturday night.

“Gabriel Bonfim is a young, hungry lion and it’s ‘I wanna come up, I wanna prove myself,’ but I’m still there; I’m still that hungry lion,” he said.  “I’m not the guy (that says), ‘I’m gonna hold my spot and defend my honor.’ I’m still fighting for honor, I’m still looking to be the best in the world, I’m still chasing it. I still have many more things to accomplish in this; I’m not satisfied.”

In terms of his purpose and motivation heading into the weekend, Muhammad may not be fighting to hold onto his spot in the hierarchy, but that is unquestionably what is at stake here.

The welterweight division has never been deeper and the battle for positioning in the Top 15 seemingly gets more competitive every couple of weeks.

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Perhaps there is no better illustration of just how quickly things can change than by the fact that Muhammad is already two fighters removed from being champion and the man that beat him, Della Maddalena, is in a similar position, having dropped the title to Islam Makhachev last November and fallen to Carlos Prates last month in his hometown.

Regardless of the reality of the situation and his own motivations, the goal and approach remain the same for Muhammad, who wants to prove to himself that he’s still every bit the dominant force he believes himself to be inside the Octagon.

“I think it’s the mental game of being more locked in and not doing it for anybody else,” he said. “I know what I’m doing it for, I know who I’m fighting for, and it’s not to prove a point for somebody else; it’s to prove a point to myself — that I know where I am and how good I am.

“I know how hard I work, we didn’t cut no corners for this fight, we didn’t cut no corners in this camp, so it’s just going out there and putting a pace on where I know he’s not gonna keep up; putting a pressure on that breaks the best in the world, and then showing him ‘I am the best in the world. You’re not gonna make your name off me, you’re not gonna take my spot.’”

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And if all goes as intended, there will be a lot of talk about the unheralded camp that has produced three UFC champions in the last handful of years come Monday morning.

“Going in there and dominating,” began Muhammad when asked how he would define success this weekend. “Putting on the kind of performance where all they’re talking about on Monday is ‘What are they doing down in Chicago? Bully and Brendan, both dominant wins.’

“That’s gonna be a victory for me.”