{"id":77916,"date":"2025-08-18T17:22:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T17:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/77916\/"},"modified":"2025-08-18T17:22:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T17:22:09","slug":"alexander-volkanovski-lerone-murphy-fight-a-no-brainer-for-december","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/77916\/","title":{"rendered":"Alexander Volkanovski: Lerone Murphy fight \u2018a no-brainer\u2019 for December"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Alexander Volkanovski\u2019s first defense of his second championship reign could be set.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The UFC 319 co-main event had the makings of a potential No. 1 contender fight and Lerone Murphy stated his case in no uncertain terms with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mmafighting.com\/ufc\/399469\/ufc-319-video-lerone-murphy-demolishes-aaron-pico-with-devastating-spinning-back-elbow-knockout\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">an unreal first-round spinning back elbow knockout <\/a>of Aaron Pico. Murphy is undefeated in 17 pro bouts, including a 9-0-1 mark in the UFC, and his finish of Pico could propel him into a long-awaited title shot.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Volkanovski supported Murphy\u2019s callout on social media, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mmafighting.com\/ufc-events-ppv\/399689\/lerone-murphy-responds-to-alexander-volkanovski-title-callout\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Murphy responded to that gesture<\/a> at Saturday\u2019s post-fight press conference, saying, \u201cDecember will be great to share the octagon with Volkanovski, one of the featherweight GOATs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">As of now, the champ agrees.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cI think it\u2019s a bit of a no-brainer,\u201d Volkanovski said on his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=NtmivYIpPZA\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">YouTube<\/a> channel. \u201cDecember\u2019s looking good. There were earlier dates that probably wouldn\u2019t work for guys that are fighting right now anyway, so the later dates were always looking better for me anyway and for my future potential opponents. So December\u2019s looking like it could be there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Murphy isn\u2019t the only featherweight contender on a lengthy win streak. The undefeated Movsar Evloev was actually expected to fight Pico, but that bout failed to materialize after Evloev withdrew allowing Murphy to step in.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Volkanovski actually thought he would defend against Evlov after beating Diego Lopes for a vacant belt at UFC 314, but he expects the matchmakers to move on after Murphy\u2019s impressive win.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cA lot of people are going to be, like, \u2018Movsar should be there,\u2019\u201d Volkanovski said. \u201cI tried. I tried to make that happen. I thought he deserves it, he did deserve it, he had this fight and then I\u2019m, like, alright, he\u2019s going to have to do this fight and then he definitely gets it and then he pulled out and you know what the UFC\u2019s like with things like that. Maybe they tried to push it back because they pushed the date further and he still didn\u2019t do it. Maybe it was a serious injury, I\u2019m not sure, I don\u2019t know what it is. Maybe that\u2019s why he can\u2019t fight, I don\u2019t know, but it doesn\u2019t look like it\u2019s going to be Movsar.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cI\u2019ve tried with all of them, but it looks like it\u2019s Lerone Murphy, it makes a lot of sense. So let\u2019s do Lerone Murphy, December, sounds great.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Volkanovski is yet to hear any official word on who he\u2019s fighting, though he made sure to pay close attention to Saturday\u2019s co-main event. Even though Pico was making his UFC debut, a memorable finish by the 28-year-old might have been enough to set up a date with Volkanovski, especially considering Pico\u2019s reputation as an all-action fighter during his time with Bellator.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">For Volkanovski, building up his next fight is strictly a numbers game.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cI had my eye on this one,\u201d Volkanovski said. \u201cDid I know that the winner of this is going to be fighting for the title? No, I don\u2019t. I still don\u2019t have no clear answers. But at least you had Pico saying he thinks he\u2019s going to knock me out and outwrestle me and obviously I end up saying something back. I don\u2019t think he was being disrespectful for that and I wasn\u2019t being disrespectful. I\u2019m literally just trying to put the feelers out there. Who knows who I\u2019ve got next?<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cIt could be Lerone Murphy. It could have been Pico. It could have been Silva if he beats Diego. Movsar, you never know, I don\u2019t know. Or even Yair, I\u2019m trying to put the feelers out for whoever it is so it makes sense. If for some reason it can\u2019t be these guys, it ends up being this person, at least it\u2019s got a little bit of legs behind it, at least it\u2019s still, \u2018Alright, it makes a little bit of sense.\u2019 I\u2019m going to put the feelers out with everyone. So the winner of this, that was never promised to me or that was never something that was going to happen, but I\u2019m like, you never know.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"duet--article--comments-link _1jdgahs9\" href=\"http:\/\/www.mmafighting.com\/ufc-events-ppv\/399790\/alexander-volkanovski-lerone-murphy-fight-a-no-brainer-for-december#comments\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alexander Volkanovski\u2019s first defense of his second championship reign could be set. The UFC 319 co-main event had&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":{"0":"post-77916","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-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc","15":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77916","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=77916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}