Belal Muhammad felt Umar Nurmagomedov’s pain.
Nurmagomedov suffered a brutal loss this past weekend in the main event of UFC Shanghai, where he was knocked out for the first time in his career by surging bantamweight contender Song Yadong. Following the finish, emotions flowed on all sides, with Song running around the octagon as a crowd packed with his compatriots roared, and Nurmagomedov’s brother Usman almost getting into a physical altercation with Song.
A longtime friend and training partner of the Nurmagomedov family, Muhammad also had a visceral reaction to the stunning KO.
“Song Yadong against Umar literally broke my heart,” Muhammad said on his YouTube channel. “Not because I hate Song Yadong, but because I know how hard Umar works. Umar is probably one of the nicest human beings, humblest human beings I’ve ever met, and I knew once that knockout happened that the Twitter trolls, the Instagram trolls, that just hate them, hate him because he’s part of Khabib [Nurmagomedov’s] crew, right?
“They always wanted to see Khabib lose, they want to see their team lose, and I know they were going to attack him and come at him hard. It just freaking makes me more mad just because I know how nice he is and how good of a person he is.”
Song was a sizable underdog heading into the contest against Nurmagomedov, who had lost just once in 21 pro bouts and never been finished. With one perfectly placed shot, Song shook up the contender line at 135 pounds.
Muhammad thinks anyone celebrating Nurmagomedov’s downfall has a misconception of who Nurmagomedov really is, which wasn’t helped by fight week comments about Song that circulated during fight week.
“People were saying, ‘He said that Song Yadong was a trash bag’ or something like that,” Muhammad said. “It was in Russian, so he even came out and said himself that he didn’t say it, they translated it wrong. He respects all of his opponents, I know that for a fact.
“Even Merab [Dvalishvili], I don’t think that he has truly bad blood for him. He’s pure at heart; he’s a good kid.”
Beyond the incredible knockout, the most controversial aspect of the fight was Usman rushing into the cage to attend to his brother. As he did so, Song collided with him, and it looked for a moment like Usman aimed to strike Song with an elbow before pulling back. The situation eventually de-escalated, with Khabib and the rest of Team Nurmagomedov showing their respect for Song.
Muhammad understands where Usman was coming from and is glad nothing came of the potential altercation.
“For me, I get so nervous when I’m cornering, and it’s my boys,” Muhammad said. “Imagine that’s your brother, that’s your older brother out there, and to see him get knocked out like that, you can just see how emotional he was. Even Khabib tried to stop him from going into the cage, but there was no bad blood from him. He was just going in there to check on his brother, wake his brother up. That’s just the love of a brother.
“Only a brother can know that, so to the people that are looking to complain, argue, blah blah blah, it’s like, obviously the worst-case scenario could have been him elbowing him and something bad happening like that, but it didn’t. Just on to the next one.”
