The MMA world is pretty excited for Ilia Topuria‘s lightweight move—for the most part. After knocking out two of the best featherweight champions at 145 lbs, ‘El Matador’ wants a shot at double-champ glory. However, some folks such as welterweight champion Belal Muhammad don’t think ‘El Matador’ did the right thing. Speaking to Michael Bisping and Paul Felder on the Believe You Me podcast, ‘Bully B’ was asked his thoughts on champions like Topuria wanting to move up and fight for a second belt. And the 170-pound king had a pretty reasonable and fair response.

“I think now in this day and age, I think it takes at least you gotta at least beat the whole top five in your division before you could start talking about jumping up. Like it has to be cleaned out there shouldn’t be nobody that’s a contender left,” he said. Specifically, the Chicago native, who was briefly teammates Khabib Nurmagomedov and Islam Makhachev, had a big problem with Topuria vacating his featherweight belt and moving to lightweight despite only defending his 145-pound title once.

“I don’t like to look past all these guys or look too far into the future. And I think especially now, like, Ilia bro, yeah, you had two huge wins against Volkanovski and Holloway but there’s still other guys in your division before you say ‘I’ve done all I had to do at 145, I want to move up, right. I’ve earned my right to go up.’ But it’s like when you think about it, at the end of the day, you defended it about once and I don’t think that’s worth it,” Muhammad added.

Of course, the reason that Ilia Topuria moved up was because of weight-cutting issues, and that the move up was the right call. The Spanish-Georgian superstar didn’t hold on to his title and did the honorable thing by vacating it as soon as he announced he would be going to 155. He didn’t hold up the division or create any unnecessary ambiguity, and the division has moved on without a hitch, with the vacant featherweight title up for grabs at UFC 314 next month.

But, as you know, Belal Muhammad himself has plans to move up and become double champ. So wouldn’t that make him a hypocrite considering he hasn’t had a single title defense yet? Well, no. Let’s see what ‘Remember the Name’ had to say.

Unlike Ilia Topuria Belal Muhammad plans on defending his belt more than once

Belal Muhammad is no stranger to double champ aspirations. After middleweight champion Dricus Du Plessis absolutely outclassed Sean Strickland at their UFC 312 clash last month, Muhammad, who loves trolling people, couldn’t help but take a shot at ‘DDP’. “I can be double champ pretty easily,” ‘Bully B’ wrote on X right after UFC 312.

Most saw that as the Chicago native alluding to wanted to move up right away. But that is not the case. It was a (successful) attempt on his part to rile people up, which is something he likes to do. “For me, I’m like, I’m just gonna tweet out just to just to see who’s gonna respond,” Muhammad told Bisping and Felder.

In fact, in a recent interview with MMA Junkie, the welterweight champ said “I gotta win a couple more fights and then I can start talking about going up.” And it isn’t hard to see what these fights are. Muhammad is set to face Aussie powerhouse Jack Della Maddalena at UFC 315 this May, which will probably be followed by Shavkat Rakhmonov. Then there is also a surging Joaquin Buckley in the wings, while Ian Machado Garry prepares for a renewed push for the title shot.

In short, Muhammad has his hands full and will be doing what he felt Ilia Topuria should do—clear out the division before trying to move up. What do you think about Belal Muhammad’s take on Ilia Topuria’s lightweight move?