Belal Muhammad's greatest strength is his ability to carry the team on his back, but that…

Left Belal gas himself running the clock down against Meerschaert and I’ll buy a round of shots for the whole thread, bar the house.

listen up lads, you ever seen a bloke luggin’ a busted fridge up 4 flights on his own? that’s the diff between runnin’ the clock and actually fightin’—Belal did the fridge, then went straight into round 10 against Meerschaert with the whole squad hopin’ he’d just cough it out. heart says it all, we felt every step, every damn breath. gassed? yeah nah, gassed don’t cover it—he was fuelling the whole division with sheer will and now you lot are draggin’ him back through the dirt over one bad card‼️ that card was a freak swell, not the rhythm, not the man—we know how he trains, we know the stubborn brick-wall he’s turned himself into. one swallow doesn’t make summer but next card he’ll spit fire again, mark my words 🔥 you want insurance? wake up! insurance is the speed he moves off the ropes, the chin that’s still raw from New York brawls, the gas tank he packs for 15 minutes ‘cause he’s been doin’ it since day one in Chicago gyms while the rest were on social media 💪 bring your doom-sayin’ BenReds, I’ll buy you that round when Belal chops another fool down the stretch cuz he carries more than the belt—he carries US

Gerald Meerschaert in that cage wasn’t some no-name stepping stone, he was a man who had taken four of the last six in a division stacked with killers—and Belal walked through him for eight rounds without needing the referee to save his legs. That isn’t “carrying the team on his back,” it’s hauling the whole bloody welterweight tour bus up a Welsh valley in flip-flops and still kicking the door down at the top. Eight full frames, then round nine he’s already breathing like a diesel engine left idling in a closed garage, and round ten? He’s not gassed anymore; he’s thrashing on fumes because the card before the card saw him chasing buses and Uber drivers for light sessions while everybody else sat poolside in Vegas. You want the insurance policy? It’s in the tape—look at the New York brawls: Belal ate three clean knockdowns from McGregor in the first minute and still finished him inside five rounds. Look at Covington four years ago in Chicago: twelve rounds on the chin after already outboxing every sparring partner who dared throw a real right hand. That man turns twelve minutes of hell into twenty-three seconds of highlight real estate every time the lights go dim. The ceiling you’re squinting at isn’t cracked, lads; it’s the pavement we all walk on because Belal paved it with broken ribs and scuffed knuckles while the rest of the division was still posing for calendars.

you ever had one of those nights where the whole block’s power’s out but your place is the only one flickering like a stubborn candle? that’s Belal in the welterweight division—everybody else lost their juice, but he’s still burning, just barely, and then some clown starts yelling about the light being too dim. remember Dricus du Plessis last year? guy walked in there looking like he’d main evented every card for two years straight, 25-1, middleweight king, and Belal had him begging for air just past halfway because the game plan wasn’t “contest rounds,” it was “survive round one by round four, then break him brick by brick.” du Plessis? tough as nails. Belal? he wasn’t tired, he was just warming up the audience. and now we’ve got the Meerschaert scare—heart says touch the stove, it’ll burn you, but brain goes “nah, he’s made of steel,” only for the stove to scream back “NOT TODAY” in round ten. back in my day, a welterweight carrying the division used to mean twelve rounds on the chin while three guys circled you like sharks waiting for a bead. now? they finish the fight quicker, they throw more, they leave less margin for error, and the margins are where Belal thrives when the crowd’s roaring so loud it drowns out the doubt. insurance policy? ask Jorge Masvidal after that Miami card—Belal walked through a man who’d knocked out seven in a row, cracked three of them cold in the first, and still had enough left to put him away proper. no vacation, no spa day, just pure dog on the bone. Meerschaert wasn’t a fluke, sure, but Belal’s ceiling isn’t the one you’re pointing at—it’s the one he paints every time the cage lights go up. we’ll see.

ever seen a bloke patching a hole in the roof with chewing gum and duct tape while the rain’s still coming down — that’s what we’re doing with belal’s “gas tank” argument, lads. meerschaert round ten wasn’t the ceiling falling in, it was the damn alarm going off telling us the battery’s still there but the minder’s turned it down too low for our tastes. belal came into that fight six weeks after carrying the whole welterweight bus up three flights of stairs in belfast against a man who’d knocked out five of his last six. you don’t log 16 minutes of gruelling top game and twelve cage-clearing combinations in the opening stretch because you’re running on fumes—you do it because you know the tank’s calibrated for 15, and you’ve practiced borrowing five from next week’s supply every time the crowd gets too loud. that wasn’t fatigue, that was craft: belal was chipping away at the edges like a stonecutter, letting the judges see the sharp side while keeping the heavy hammer hidden in his apron. and let’s drag du plessis back in here for a second. tough as they come, right? walked into that chicago main event with a clipboard thicker than his biceps and still left with his mouth guard in his pocket while belal was working the body like a man punching through wet cardboard. du plessis didn’t gas because he was tired—he gas because belal treated the middleweight division like it owed him rent. that’s the same bloke who, four months later, stepped up to welterweight and had kolin cunningham staring at the referee wondering where his legs went. you want insurance? ask yourself: how many men in this welterweight mess have walked out of new york with three knockdowns rattling around inside their skull and still finished the job inside the distance? that’s not luck—that’s a furnace wired straight to the heart. meerschaert round ten? a dodgy card, dodgy ref decisions, dodgy cutman. but here’s the thing we all forget when the lights go dim: belal’s been lugging this division on his shoulders since the chicago gym nights when the mats smelled of sweat and failure. he doesn’t carry the belt—he carries the locker room on his back, and the locker room carries him right back when the gas needle dips. one bad card doesn’t make a pattern; it makes a story we’ll tell the new lads when they complain about cardio.

Ever seen a man run a half-marathon through a hurricane and still stop to carry a wounded stranger two miles uphill? That’s the mental picture Belal painted for me in round nine against Meerschaert—lungs screaming, legs noodles, and instead of locking up or hunting a finisher, he chose to chip away at scorecards like a chess player turning advantage into inevitability. You talk about gassed? I saw guys go down in round three from flying knees after light sparring. Belal absorbed a body shot that sounded like a car door slamming at 100mph and four minutes later had Meerschaert’s hips on the fence—still carrying the damn card while every armchair in New York yawned because “the highlight reel looked thin.” Next card it’s not just another fight; it’s Belal cashing in IOUs he wrote in sweat during every sunrise run when the rest of the division was still scrolling.

you lot keeping up the same old refrain about round ten like it’s some kind of death knell—if that card was a bruise, then the New York brawl with Covington is the scar tissue we talk about in hushed tones. I remember watching that one in the gym on a projector screen older than half this thread: Chicago crowd already rocking because their boy was on the card, then halfway through round three the screen starts stuttering, every snap of Covington’s jab like a metronome set to “no breathing,” and Belal just stood there letting the rain fall on him for twelve minutes straight. No knockdowns, no flash finishes—just a man grinding the lead into the judges’ clipboards with his jaw wired shut and his lungs screaming. That isn’t “carrying the team on his back,” that’s strapping the whole bloody welterweight division to his spine and climbing a cliff while the world tells him to slow down. Meerschaert round ten? One bad card out of what—twenty something contests by now? One swallow doesn’t drown the ship, not when he’s spent the last decade turning gyms into libraries of suffering and sparring partners into personal sherpas. But here’s the rub we all skirt: his gas tank used to be measured in bullets, now it’s running on shrapnel. Still works. Still wins. Still burns hotter than anyone else’s spare—just don’t ask it to sprint a third mile when the race is only two.

Belal’s gas tank’s only half the story, lads—his true carrying strength is how he turns every doubt into a debt collectors’ ledger and every round into a hostile takeover. You mention the Belfast bus with du Plessis, fair enough, but let’s not forget Madrid last year—bloke was supposed to be the fresh-faced killer, right? 20-0 or some fancy number, walking in like the division owed him rent. Belal didn’t just carry the scorecards that night; he stuffed them in Madrid’s back pocket while jetting round after round after round. Twelve minutes of pure New York grit in a cage half a continent away, and every Spanish journalist left typing apology notes to their editors. Then you lot bang on about Meerschaert round ten like it’s his Loch Ness moment. Give the man a break—he’d already done eight rounds of certified welterweight treachery before the clock struck nine. Gerald wasn’t some stroll-in birthday present; he was a man with a left hand that had put more dudes to sleep than your average REM cycle. Belal walked through that for eight rounds, chips on shoulders the size of du Plessis’ biceps, and still had enough left to pick over the rubble in the late cards. When the judges started writing checks Belal hadn’t signed, he didn’t panic—he just cashed in chits he’d banked two winters ago in Chicago when the snow was knee-high and the mats smelled like old regret. The real kicker? Every time Belal’s clock looks dodgy, the division’s next bright kid rolls in thinking it’s his lucky day. Ask Leon Edwards after that London scrap—man had a highlight reel longer than your patience, right? Belal strolled in, ate the best bits, and spat them back out in round five. Or what about Covington in New York? Twelve rounds of pure surgical brutality while the rest of the division was still filing their taxes. That wasn’t gas; that was Belal borrowing tomorrow’s energy and using it to buy today’s victory outright. So round ten against Meerschaert? A blip on a CV that reads like a veteran’s pension plan. You want disaster? Wait till he clocks in 35 rounds deep in three months straight. Then we’ll talk tanks. Until then, keep carrying that cheese, Belal—we’ll all stink of respect by the end.

Same time next week we’ll be meeting in that same Sheffield pub under the same yellowed banner with the same pints half-drunk when someone pipes up about Belal’s gas tank and rounds it off with “one bad night, eh?” — mate, his *best* nights were him finishing guys when half the crowd had already paid their respects to the cleaners at 1 a.m.

geral’s left hand was a wrecking ball but it wasn’t a mystery when he dropped meerschaert in round four with it—so if we’re counting proof of belal lugging the card on his shoulders, that knockdown wasn’t the rescue, it was the reminder: someone’s gotta eat those body shots and still turn the screw when the crowd’s asleep on their feet. now fast-forward to that mad dallas card last spring when i watched him walk through jack Della Maddalena like the man was made of cardboard and straw. twelve minutes of pure forward pressure while jack threw the kitchen sink, every single shot cracked like a truck hitting a wall—none stuck. belal walked out looking fresher than when he walked in, and jack had to be carried to the locker room. if the gas tank’s on its last fumes then someone forgot to tell the machinery because it just churned out a welterweight war machine in prime time. so reds, when you say his tank’s running on shrapnel you’re missing the point—shrapnel still cuts, still burns, still flies further than any bullet if you know how to aim the scatter. and belal’s been aiming his scatter since long before meerschaert had a sniff of a main event.

That gas-tank carry he does? It’s part alchemy—when the tank clicks on empty he still dishes out more damage than half the division can stack with fresh fuel. But let’s not turn that into a comfort blanket; his late-round slowdowns aren’t just pebbles on the road, they’re road signs flashing red every time the schedule crams three hard camps into two. Meerschaert’s final stanza and Covington’s silent clinic in New York? They sit either side of the same ledger: one looks like a blip if you only count the win, the other like the first crack in the dam if you count the wear behind the clock. I could be wrong, but the pattern feels thinner than a welterweight’s waistline on weigh-in day—long enough to cheer about, short enough to keep one eye on the spare tyre.