"Belal Muhammad isn't even a fan of the UFC": the champion harshly mocked his rival, Rakhmonov.

The holder of the UFC middleweight championship title, South African Dricus du Plessis, has made a bold statement regarding the UFC welterweight champion, American Belal Muhammad of Palestinian descent, as reported by Caravan.kz.

In an interview on the YouTube channel The Ariel Helwani Show, du Plessis claimed that Belal Muhammad does not interest UFC bosses as a titleholder and predicted Muhammad's defeat in his first title defense.

“I like how Belal Muhammad behaves as if he has a choice to one day step up and fight for the middleweight title. The UFC will never allow him to do that. Belal Muhammad isn’t even liked by the UFC. So what makes him think like that? He hasn’t defended his belt even once. On Twitter, he’s definitely better than in fights,” said du Plessis.

He also mentioned that he would never consider fighting Belal if he moved up to middleweight.

“(A fight with Belal) would be unfair. Did you see how tall that guy is? He’s the smallest fighter in the welterweight division. I couldn't believe his height was 170 when I saw him,” concluded Dricus du Plessis.

Earlier, an expert explained in an exclusive interview with Caravan why the fight between Shavkat Rakhmonov and Belal Muhammad for the UFC title might fall through.