Kamaru Usman lays out plan to take “welterweight strap back” after Belal Muhammad becomes champ at UFC 304

Kamaru Usman is focused on reclaiming his welterweight title.

In the main event of UFC 304 on Saturday, Belal Muhammad became the new welterweight champion with a dominant decision win over Leon Edwards. It was a great performance from Muhammad and after the win, former champ Kamaru Usman believes his path back to the title has gotten much easier.

Usman was the welterweight champion from 2019 until 2022 and ‘The Nigerian Nightmare’ believes he could get an immediate title shot against Belal Muhammad. But, if that doesn’t happen, Usman is more than willing to face either Shavkat Rakhmonov or Jack Della Maddalena to secure a title shot.

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“I’ll tell you, right now, you want ‘The Nigerian Nightmare’ Kamaru Usman? Give me ample time to get in there. End of the year, top of the next year I’ll go in there and take my welterweight strap back, 100 percent. But, if you’re talking to the man that’s from the outside looking in trying to satisfy everybody looking at the landscape of everything. Yes, it’s, ‘Ah, he lost to Leon Edwards.’ But people have amnesia very quickly. People forget that I was winning almost 24 minutes of that fight until lightning struck and Leon landed that kick,” Usman said on the Pound 4 Pound podcast.

“And I think when you land something like it almost spoiled Leon to where he forgot that, ‘Hey, I was being dominated this exact same way.’ Now you feel, ‘I’m the champion, I can just do whatever I want.’ No. You have to actually go out there and fix those mistakes, which clearly he didn’t fix. But because of that loss, the UFC now as a company you’re going to go, ‘Okay, I want to get Usman a fight to really show the fans that he’s back and to show us that he’s back and deserves a chance to potentially go out there and get that title back. In order to do that, get him someone on the top. Which could be Shavkat Rakhmonov, or it could be JDM,” Usman added.

Rakhmonov does seem likely to face Muhammad next, so the likelier outcome would be Kamaru Usman taking on Jack Della Maddalena. It would be an intriguing matchup and the winner would likely get a UFC welterweight title shot.

Kamaru Usman is 20-4 as a pro and coming off a decision loss to Khamzat Chimaev on short notice at middleweight after back-to-back losses to Leon Edwards.