230-pound Sean Strickland eyes grudge match with Belal Muhammad next: ‘Sack up!’

The timing might finally be perfect for Sean Strickland vs. Belal Muhammad.

Strickland and Muhammad have been talking trash for literal years now. How did the beef start? Back in 2021, Strickland needed an opponent when Luke Rockhold withdrew due to injury, and Muhammad offered to step in because he “hates that piece of trash.” Strickland never forgot, and the duo have traded barbs back-and-forth ever since.

Sadly, the match up has yet to actually materialize in the Octagon. Aside from being a weight class apart, both men have spent some unexpected time as UFC champion. With both coming off fairly dominant title fight losses and pushed out of their respective immediate title pictures, there’s fewer obligations preventing the grudge match from coming to fruition.

Strickland, who most recently came up short opposite Dricus Du Plessis at UFC 312, thinks it’s time to end the talk and start the scrap.

“Belal would be a fun fight. That would be a fun one. Belal you should finally sack up,” Strickland told Helen Yee (via MMAWeekly). “This is it. You could finally sack the f—k up. All that s—t you talked, man. We can finally make it happen. You lost your belt. You kind of got f—ked up. I got f—ked up. We should make that fight happen Belal.

“All that s—t he talks on Instagram. He’s like, ‘I’m going to come fight you. I’m going not come do this. I’m going to come to that.’ Now you can you f—king p—sy. Do it for Palestine.”

There is, however, one potential obstacle. In the same interview, Strickland stepped on a scale and nearly broke the damn thing! Unless there’s some kind of trickery at play, Strickland is currently 230 pounds, a whopping 45 pounds over the Middleweight limit.

Safe to say, Strickland will need a full camp to make the Middleweight limit … if not a few extra weeks of dieting. Fortunately, that should time out well, seeing as Muhammad just got banged up badly in his title loss to Jack Della Maddalena. “The Bully” will need time to heal up before jumping back into the fray, so maybe the grudge match can finally fit everybody’s schedule?

Stay tuned.