On November 12, 2016, at UFC 205, Vicente Luque knocked out Belal Muhammad in the opening bout of the FOX Sports prelim bouts, hours before the main pay per view event began. On a night where Conor McGregor ran over Eddie Alvarez to become "champ-champ," Tyron Woodley and Stephen Thompson fought to one of the 19 draws in UFC history and Yoel Romero finished Chris Weidman with a flying knee that was as brutal as it was absurd, Luque's win was all but forgotten.

Since that KO, Vicente Luque has gone 10-2 with five Fight of the Night bonuses, one Performance of the Night bonus and, besides for a decision win of Mike Perry, has finished all-comers, developing the D'Arce choke as his special move along the way.

Belal Muhammad has also put together the almost identical record of 10-1 (1) with the one No Contest coming against Leon Edwards, who also provided one of Luque's losses. The main difference is that, of Muhammad's 10 wins, only one came by stoppage, the rest were decision wins delivered by his increasingly strong wrestling.

Now, five-and-a-half years later, that result suddenly became very important to the welterweight division. Luque is ranked fifth and Muhammad is sixth and what would normally be a UFC Vegas main event designed to get one of the men into title contention is now a bout to see how much both men have grown.

The first thing that was obvious is that they are now far more mature and composed fighters; neither had the bluster to get a repeat of their first fight's 79-second KO ending. But it also didn't take long to see that this benefited Muhammad far more than Luque. In the opening round, the Brazilian looked to be feeling out his opponent, only to find himself caught entirely off-guard by an explosive Muhammad takedown and then by his strength when on the ground.

Though he didn't do much damage, Muhammad established over 90 seconds of control time and when Luque did get back to his feet, he couldn't really do anything without getting countered.

Round 2 went the exact same way – this time Muhammad had 1:16 of control time – and the third looked to be heading in that direction too until Luque clocked Muhammad with several right hooks. And yet Muhammad's incredible strength in the clinch meant that Luque couldn't capitalize and once again he spent a chunk of the round flat on his back.

To make matters worse for Luque, rounds 4 and 5 revealed that this had actually been his gameplan all along. Wrestling is incredibly tiring and, until now, Belal Muhammad had only fought three-round fights. Those early rounds where Luque looked to be feeling out his opponent was instead him conserving his energy and goading Muhammad into takedowns in order to fatigue him so he could be knocked out later in the main event rounds. This became clear when the latter rounds played out almost identically to the first, with the one difference being that now Luque was so tired that he couldn't fight off Muhammad's takedowns whether he wanted to or not.

Belal Muhammad eventually won by unanimous decision (46-49, 46-49, 47-48). UFCstats.com had him outstruck 84 to 60 but his seven minutes and 29 seconds of grappling control is what won it for him.

Post-fight, he put on a pair of sunglasses and called out "coward" Colby Covington and, on paper, it's a fight he should get: Seven win in a row, each with a dominant performance like this, is usually the route to big money matches.

However, it's well known that UFC President Dana White and his matchmaking team absolutely hate fighters like this. The prime example is Jon Fitch, a controlling grappler who won one-sided decision wins without imposing much, if any, damage on his rivals. Fitch was 13-1-1 in the UFC when he was knocked out cold by Johny Hendricks and top UFC official Joe Silva celebrated like he had won himself. Fitch was then bounced from UFC a win and a loss later. If Belal Muhammad isn't careful, that could be his fate.