{"id":383124,"date":"2025-12-31T18:42:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T18:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/383124\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T18:42:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T18:42:08","slug":"demetrious-johnson-diego-lopes-title-shot-proof-ufcs-not-a-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/383124\/","title":{"rendered":"Demetrious Johnson: Diego Lopes title shot proof UFC’s ‘not a sport’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Demetrious Johnson questions UFC’s decision to give Diego Lopes<\/a> another title shot.<\/p>\n

Lopes (27-7 MMA, 6-2 UFC) lost to Alexander Volkanovski in their vacant featherweight title fight at UFC 314<\/a>. He rebounded with a knockout of Jean Silva at UFC Fight Night 259<\/a>, which earned him another shot at Volkanovski (27-4 MMA, 14-3 UFC) in the UFC 325 headliner on Jan. 31 from Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney (Paramount+<\/a>).<\/p>\n

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With undefeated contenders Lerone Murphy and Movsar Evloev vying for their opportunity, Lopes was not the right choice in Johnson’s eyes.<\/p>\n

“You had the opportunity to fight for the belt. You lost. It was four (rounds to) one. I feel everybody feels comfortable saying that,” Johnson said of Lopes on his YouTube channel<\/a>. “I felt Alex Volkanovski won that fight in dominant fashion. Then Diego Lopes goes on to beat Jean Silva. He gets rocked there. It’s a back-and-forth fight. It was a war. It’s one fight, and he gets the opportunity to have another title shot. Now is it because he’s very popular? Is it because he sells a lot of tickets? I don’t know.<\/p>\n

“But are we doing this for popularity, or are we doing this because somebody is better? That is where I like to question the legitimacy of this thing we call a ‘sport.’ That’s why I always say it’s not a sport. It is pick and choose. ‘I’m going to push this athlete because he has a market that I want to infiltrate, he has a market that we haven’t been able to get our foot in or our roots in, and we’re not really worried about that.’ That’s fine. Just let me know that.”<\/p>\n

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Johnson also pointed to Sean O’Malley<\/a>‘s immediate title-fight rematch against Merab Dvalishvili<\/a> at UFC 316 as an example of the promotion trying to push particular fighters.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Demetrious Johnson: Diego Lopes title shot proof UFC’s ‘not a sport’<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Demetrious Johnson questions UFC’s decision to give Diego Lopes another title shot. Lopes (27-7 MMA, 6-2 UFC) lost…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330557,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[34341,64,63,66052,44864,786,44862,39840,785,85,787],"class_list":["post-383124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-alexander-volkanovski","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-demetrious-johnson","tag-diego-lopes","tag-fighting","tag-jean-silva","tag-lerone-murphy","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383124","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=383124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}