1 of the biggest shockers from UFC 304

Another week, another night of incredible fighting action in the world's premier combat sports promotion. We've learned a lot about some of the sport's top contenders, and we've also seen plenty of previously held opinions validated throughout the night. But UFC 304 also gave us a fair bit of surprises as the night progressed, making this a difficult article to conceptualize.

On a night when so many results were shocking, it was difficult to select just one surprise to highlight in this piece. Paddy Pimblett's submission over King Green, Muhammad Mokaev's shocking dismissal from the promotion, or even Manel Kape's baffling inactivity throughout the fight were all legitimate contenders for this spot. But there was really only one possible answer for the biggest shock of the night ... It was always going to be Belal Muhammad.

As the night progressed into the wee hours of 6 a.m. local time, Muhammad managed to dethrone Leon Edwards in a shockingly dominant performance. The ground game favoring Muhammad wasn't really all that much of a surprise, but no one expected Edwards to perform quite as badly as he did.

Going into the main event, many people gave Muhammad zero chance of winning the fight and the odds reflected that with Edwards a heavy favorite to win the match-up.

We had already seen them fight each other before when they headlined a UFC APEX event on March 13, 2021. That fight ended in a no-contest due to an accidental eye poke in the second round, but Edwards' striking technique was far too impressive for Muhammad to handle in their brief matchup. Both fighters had improved steadily in the three years since then, but many didn't see enough of a stylistic difference in Muhammad's game to indicate that he would be able to trouble Edwards in the rematch.

Belal Muhammad's performance over Leon Edwards shocked the oddsmakers

We could not have been more wrong. Muhammad's grappling has always been fairly strong, but it hadn't been a significant factor in his last two wins against Sean Brady and Gilbert Burns, so mant were not expecting him to rely too heavily on it against Edwards. And even if he attempted to take the fight to the ground, we had already seen Edwards' ability to neutralize skilled grapplers with his takedown defense. Kamaru Usman, Colby Covington and Rafael dos Anjos all faced difficulty in bringing the fight to the ground against Edwards, and we all figured Muhammad would encounter similar troubles when he faced Edwards.

A little over a month ago, Islam Makhachev completed his third title defense against Dustin Poirier at UFC 302. In all of the post-fight hullabaloo, many fans were discussing and debating how Makhachev would fare against Edwards in a hypothetical welterweight title fight. Many were of the belief that Edwards would be able to defeat Makhachev, as he's the bigger fighter, a more technically sound striker, and he had excellent takedown defense in his preceding fights. That's how highly Edwards was regarded a month ago, and that's how severely this fight shifted many people's previously held preconceptions.

Throughout the night, Muhammad was able to ragdoll the former champion, engaging him in the clinch and using the fence effectively to leverage Edwards and throw him down. It was an uncharacteristically bad performance from Edwards, who looked exhausted from the first minute he stepped into the Octagon. But the timing of the event can't serve as a catch-all explanation for this performance. Muhammad was the better man that night, plain and simple.

Muhammad had been training with Khabib Nurmagomedov in preparation for this fight, and Nurmagomedov had designed a game plan for him to defeat Edwards. And honestly, when you watch Muhammad's approach to fighting Edwards, that makes perfect sense. He was given the perfect game plan to shock the world in Manchester, and he was able to execute it at an incredibly high level.