UFC: Belal Muhammad says ‘drunk’ heckler was hurling homophobic slurs – ‘I just wanted to jump the fence’
- Palestinian-American sheds more light on verbal abuse he suffered during win over Stephen Thompson at UFC Vegas 45
- ‘It was disrespectful … I wanted to see how tough this guy really was in person,’ Muhammad says
The Palestinian-American (20-3, 1 no contest) scored the biggest win of his career with a unanimous decision over Stephen “Wonderboy” Thompson, inserting himself into the stacked welterweight division’s top five, but later said he heard “racist words” shouted from a member of the small audience at the UFC’s Apex facility.
“Just homophobic slurs and stuff like that,” Muhammad told MMA Fighting’s Damon Martin, when asked what else he had heard.
He admitted he was surprised no one reprimanded the fan. “I’m looking at it like, ‘OK, there’s 10 people here. I’m sure everybody’s hearing it’,” the 33-year-old said. “Maybe they just thought ‘we’re not paying attention’, or it’s a co-main event and they’re like ‘Whatever, we got four weeks off after this, we’ll let is slide’.”
“It was disrespectful,” Muhammad added. “At the Apex you can hear everything. It was a drunk guy or something. I was like, ‘Who is this guy?’ I wanted to just jump over the fence and see who it was.
