{"id":323273,"date":"2025-12-02T18:26:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T18:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/323273\/"},"modified":"2025-12-02T18:26:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T18:26:10","slug":"lerone-murphy-fell-out-of-love-with-mma-after-ufc-title-shot-snub","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/323273\/","title":{"rendered":"Lerone Murphy &#8216;fell out of love&#8217; with MMA after UFC title shot snub"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Lerone Murphy was so disappointed with the UFC&#8217;s decision to go with Diego Lopes for a title shot, it changed his outlook on the sport.<\/p>\n<p>UFC featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski (27-4 MMA, 14-3 UFC) thought he would be defending his belt against Murphy in December, only to find out he will be headlining UFC 325 on Jan. 31 in a rematch against Lopes (27-7 MMA, 6-2 UFC).<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Volkanovski <a href=\"https:\/\/sports.yahoo.com\/article\/ufc-314-results-alexander-volkanovski-053229478.html\" data-ylk=\"slk:defeated Lopes to claim the vacant belt at UFC 314;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;outcm:mb_qualified_link;_E:mb_qualified_link;ct:story;\" class=\"link  yahoo-link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">defeated Lopes to claim the vacant belt at UFC 314<\/a>, but Lopes&#8217; rebound knockout win over Jean Silva in September was good enough to make him leapfrog the likes of Murphy (17-0-1 MMA, 9-0-1 UFC) and Movsar Evloev.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When I first found out, I fell out of love with it for a bit. I&#8217;m not going to lie,&#8221; Murphy said on <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/7C60Uo76-Uk?si=xq1a2Wg-QXt4oRnX\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:&quot;The Ariel Helwani Show.&quot;;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">&#8220;The Ariel Helwani Show.&#8221;<\/a> &#8220;I got into MMA over boxing because I thought there&#8217;s no politics. I thought it was simply do the work, the best fight the best, and that&#8217;s the way it goes. That&#8217;s what hurt me the most a bit.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Then I thought it over, and it&#8217;s like, get over it. It is what it is. It&#8217;s business. Just keep fighting, keep doing what you&#8217;re doing, keep winning, and we&#8217;ll get there eventually. I think it&#8217;s inevitable that it&#8217;s going to happen, and you know I&#8217;m going to be champion. My road&#8217;s never been easy from the get-go.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>With Volkanovski&#8217;s win over Lopes eight months ago being a convincing one, Murphy said there can only be one reason why Lopes is getting another shot.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;All I can think is they want a Mexican champion,&#8221; Murphy said. &#8220;They must have seen the numbers that (Brandon) Moreno pulled in, or even Lopes pulls in. It&#8217;s a business move, and it can only be that, really.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: <a href=\"https:\/\/mmajunkie.usatoday.com\/story\/sports\/ufc\/2025\/12\/02\/ufc-325-lerone-murphy-reaction-diego-lopes-title-fight-rematch-alexander-volkanovski\/87562531007\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Lerone Murphy reacts to UFC snubbing him for Diego Lopes title shot;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Lerone Murphy reacts to UFC snubbing him for Diego Lopes title shot<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lerone Murphy was so disappointed with the UFC&#8217;s decision to go with Diego Lopes for a title shot,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[34341,64,63,44864,786,39840,785,85,787,181932],"class_list":{"0":"post-323273","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-alexander-volkanovski","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-diego-lopes","12":"tag-fighting","13":"tag-lerone-murphy","14":"tag-mma","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-ufc","17":"tag-ufc-featherweight-champion"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323273","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=323273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}