Alexander Volkanovski is set to defend his featherweight title against Diego Lopes \u2026 again.<\/p>\n
The two just fought back in April 2025, with Volk taking a definitive unanimous decision win<\/a> over Lopes. But they\u2019re gonna do it again<\/a> in Sydney, Australia on January 31st, 2026 for UFC 325, and there\u2019s a lot of people scratching their heads over the decision, including Volkanovski\u2019s coach Joe Lopez.<\/p>\n \u201cI guess it was a bit of a shock to everybody,\u201d Lopez told Submission Radio following the announcement. \u201cNo disrespect to Diego because I think he\u2019s a great fighter, but we just beat him.\u201d<\/p>\n Lopez believes the 19-0 Movsar Evloev \u2014 whose last three wins are over Diego Lopez, Arnold Allen, and Aljamain Sterling \u2014 deserved the shot,<\/a> or 17-0-1 Lerone Murphy<\/a> \u2014 who beat Dan Ige, Josh Emmett, and Aaron Pico.<\/p>\n \u201cMovsar and Murphy, on paper, are probably more deserving of that title shot,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we don\u2019t call the shots. That\u2019s up to the UFC, and they\u2019ve given us Diego. So that\u2019s the card they\u2019ve given us, and that\u2019s the one we gotta play.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d say a week or two after Diego\u2019s fight, they put that on the table to us,\u201d Volk\u2019s coach said. \u201cBecause initially we were gonna be fighting in December, we were gonna headline this December card, and we were all set for that \u2026 [but] they wanted Lopez, and I don\u2019t think Lopez was gonna be ready in December.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s always been a bit of a popularity contest, who\u2019s the most popular,\u201d Lopes admitted. \u201cWhether it\u2019s the Paramount deal, I don\u2019t know. There\u2019s been a lot of negotiations behind the scenes. But at the end of the day, they\u2019re the ones calling the shots.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI know the fans are not happy. A couple of the boys have been telling me about the comments. They\u2019re not very favorable. And no disrespect to Diego, but like I said, when your last fight you beat him and it wasn\u2019t like it was a close fight, it was very one-sided. Why not give Murphy or Movsar a go? That\u2019s my opinion anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alexander Volkanovski is set to defend his featherweight title against Diego Lopes \u2026 again. The two just fought…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":314295,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85,1396],"class_list":{"0":"post-314294","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-mma","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}