UFC 304 Technical Preview: Everything we can learn from Edwards vs Muhammad 1

What can we take away from their truncated first encounter? Turns out, a lot.

Decision Machines

Belal Muhammad is a veteran MMA fighter. His eight years in the sport’s premiere organization have seen him rack up fourteen wins in the stacked welterweight division.

But one stat has left a persistent stain on his career. Out of those fourteen wins in the UFC, only three took it out of the hands of the judges.

Finishing fights isn’t everything though. Max Holloway had a streak of eight fights in a row that went to a decision. Worse than Muhammad’s lack of finishes is the fact that his fights often bring vanishingly few moments of excitement.

It’s because of this that many feel like Muhammad is just a mandatory challenger that we need to get out of the way before more exciting fights can be made for Leon Edwards.

Though Edwards isn’t an all-action fighter himself. He also has fourteen wins in the UFC and only four finishes.

From a technical perspective, both fighters’ lack of potency creates issues. Edwards’s near loss to Nate Diaz shows how allowing an opponent to stick around for the entire 15 full minutes gives them opportunities to catch you with something.

But let’s not forget that in the first meeting between Leon Edwards and Belal Muhammad, we saw a very aggressive Edwards who nearly finished Muhammad in the first round.

Let’s look at those five minutes that Edwards and Muhammad have shared inside the Octagon and try to understand what their second fight at UFC 304 might look like.

Drawing Reactions

Leon Edwards usually starts fights by feinting strikes instead of throwing them. He’s a methodical fighter who likes to get reads on his opponent’s reactions before he starts to open up.

His opponents’ response to those feints determines the direction of the fight. If they over-react, they won’t be putting much pressure on Edwards and he’ll feel more comfortable taking the front foot.

On the other hand, if opponents ignore his feints, that stops Edwards from taking the initiative and makes him back.

Let’s see which approach Muhammad took:

Edwards was able to get Muhammad to react to his feints, allowing Edwards to start working to punish those responses.

Muhammad very quickly showed Edwards that he was hyper-aware of the threat from the low kick. Nearly every time Edwards showed him a kick feint, Muhammad would raise his lead leg.

Over the course of five rounds, you can probably expect Edwards to find even more ways to set Muhammad up.

Most importantly, this allowed Edwards to seize the initiative, pressuring Muhammad to the fence for most of the round. We don’t see that very often from the Birmingham native.