Belal Muhammad wasn’t going to waste his opportunity to criticize Dricus Du Plessis’ title loss at UFC 319.

Du Plessis (23-3 MMA, 9-1 UFC) was dominated and outgrappled in a lopsided decision loss to Khamzat Chimaev in Saturday’s middleweight championship main event at United Center in Chicago.

Muhammad predicted a loss for Du Plessis, who had no answer for Chimaev’s wrestling after getting taken down 12 times and controlled for over 21 minutes.

“What did we learn? That DDP has not learned wrestling since the (Derek) Brunson fight,” Muhammad said on his YouTube channel. “I called it. I thought it was going to be an easy fight. I thought it was going to be a walk-through-you fight for Khamzat, and it was. He dominated it. Dana said he thought it was four 10-8 rounds. I had it the same. People are going to complain, people are going to say whatever they want to say, but that was a dominant victory.

“For Khamzat, it was too easy to take him down and hold him down. I know people are coming at him, but it’s on DDP to move. If I’m Khamzat, and I’ve got a full crucifix on you, and I’m hitting you, DDP needed the explosion, DDP needed the risk factor of trying to do anything to get up. But he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to get submitted. I think he was just satisfied with getting through the fight without getting finished like that.”

Despite getting held down for the majority of the fight, Du Plessis did a good job of fending off any major submission threats from Chimaev (15-0 MMA, 9-0 UFC). Muhammad thinks the South African played it too safe, and questioned his strategy.

“I’m just wondering what their game plan was,” Muhammad added. “What they thought was going to happen, if they underestimated the wrestling? Because like I said, in the Derek Brunson fight, we’ve seen that hole in your game. Brunson had mount, Brunson had side control, Brunson got you down with ease. (Robert) Whittaker got you down, and even Darren Till got you down.

“We’ve seen all those paths, and like I said, your last three fights were all against strikers so, you didn’t really have the risks of going against anybody that’s going to shoot on you. Now you did, now we see. That’s a hole. Khamzat pretty much dominated it. There’s no reason for him to be down, to be upset, it was a dominating fight, one of the most dominating championship fights we’ve seen.”

Prior to the Chimaev loss, Du Plessis had beaten Sean Strickland twice, Israel Adesanya, and Robert Whittaker.

“DDP got away with a lot of stuff, mistakes that he makes, because his matchups were kind of favorable for him, not any grapplers,” Muhammad concluded. “Now we know. He needs to fix stuff, he needs to get better.”

This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Belal Muhammad goes off on Dricus Du Plessis’ loss to Khamzat Chimaev

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