{"id":314533,"date":"2025-11-28T15:29:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T15:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/314533\/"},"modified":"2025-11-28T15:29:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T15:29:09","slug":"alexander-volkanovski-movsar-evloev-and-lerone-murphy-more-deserving-of-title-shot-than-diego-lopes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/314533\/","title":{"rendered":"Alexander Volkanovski: Movsar Evloev and Lerone Murphy \u2018more deserving\u2019 of title shot than Diego Lopes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alexander Volkanovski understands fans might be confused about his latest championship booking.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, UFC CEO Dana White announced Volkanovski is set to defend his title<\/a> against Diego Lopes in the main event of UFC 325, which takes place Jan. 31 in Sydney, Australia. One issue with the matchup? Volkanovski just beat Lopes this past April to win a vacant belt.<\/p>\n

Since then, Volkanovski has waited for the first booking of his second title reign, while Lopes scored a highlight-reel knockout of Jean Silva in September to stay in contention. Still, with undefeated challengers Movsar Evloev and Lerone Murphy targeting Volkanovski and the champion himself having previously stated his interest in fighting either of them, the Lopes rematch is a head-scratcher. Volkanovski acknowledged as much in a YouTube<\/a> video following Thursday\u2019s news.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, we all know that I wanted to fight earlier,\u201d Volkanovski said. \u201cI thought it was going to be December. We thought Lerone Murphy, December, then I guess UFC they\u2019re waiting for Jean Silva and Lopes. Then they were saying Lopes and obviously, we\u2019re like, we just fought that guy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs there more deserving people and whatnot? Whatever, everyone knows that I\u2019ll fight anyone, so whoever they put in front of me, I\u2019ll do, but there were questions. Are we waiting, are we going to do Sydney, because that\u2019s the only reason that I waited because I thought it would be December, but then they\u2019re like, \u2018We\u2019ll give you Sydney.\u2019 I\u2019m like, alright, I\u2019ll wait for that. Then it was looking like it wasn\u2019t going to happen, but then did happen, which was great.\u201d<\/p>\n

Murphy didn\u2019t hide his disappointment, writing on Twitter, \u201cMissing the opportunity to fight one of featherweight\u2019s GOATs is what hurts me the most. It\u2019s not about who\u2019s the best anymore. It\u2019s about who\u2019s most popular.\u201d Evloev subsequently offered to face Murphy for the right to be the next No. 1 contender.<\/p>\n

Now booked into back-to-back contests with Lopes, Volkanovski plans to make the most of the situation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought Movsar was deserving,\u201d Volkanovski said. \u201cLerone Murphy, I thought they were the two guys. They were the guys I called out. UFC really wanted Lopes, but at least, hey, you you know at least everyone knows they\u2019re in for a treat. It\u2019s going to be a very exciting fight.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith your Movsars and Lerones, they\u2019re probably more deserving, but are they going to bring the fight like Lopes would? I think the fans are going to appreciate the fight that me and Lopes are going to have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Volkanovski\u2019s coach Joe Lopez also addressed the rematch booking, confirming they expected to fight Evloev or Murphy next.<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess it was a bit of a shock to anybody, because no disrespect to Diego because I think he\u2019s a great fighter but we just beat him,\u201d Lopez told Submission Radio<\/a>. \u201cMovsar and Murphy, I think on paper are probably more deserving of that title shot, but 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\u2019re going to play.\u201d<\/p>\n

As far as Lopez can tell, Lopes wasn\u2019t available to fight in December and the UFC appeared intent on making the rematch happen. Volkanovski having the opportunity to fight in his home country of Australia was another bonus to waiting a couple more months to fight, though that still doesn\u2019t explain why Evloev and Murphy were passed over.<\/p>\n

It was after Lopes\u2019 win over Silva that Lopez was given indication the rematch could happen.<\/p>\n

\u201cProbably, I\u2019d say a week or two after Diego\u2019s fight they put that on the table to us,\u201d Lopez said. \u201cBecause initially we were going to be fighting in December. We were going to headline this December card and we were all set for that. We thought it was going to be either Movsar or Murphy or the winner out of Murphy and [Aaron Pico]. So we had that it was going to be out of Murphy or Pico and maybe Movsar, but we didn\u2019t really have much hope on that. Then when Murphy had that spectacular KO, we said, \u2018Yeah, it\u2019s Murphy.\u2019 And all indications and everything led to Murphy until Diego had his spectacular KO and everything changed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alexander Volkanovski understands fans might be confused about his latest championship booking. On Thursday, UFC CEO Dana White…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":314534,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":["post-314533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314533","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=314533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}