Diego Lopes won\u2019t let critics bother him ahead of his second shot at the UFC featherweight championship against Alexander Volkanovski at Saturday\u2019s UFC 325 in Sydney, Australia.<\/p>\n
Undefeated featherweight contenders Movsar Evloev and Lerone Murphy were hoping to be the ones to face Volkanovski next, but Lopes was awarded with a title shot after knocking out Jean Silva in September, rebounding from a decision loss to Volkanovski five months before.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one is going to say \u2018no\u2019 to a title fight, right?\u201d Lopes told MMA Fighting. \u201cPeople are going to criticize any decision the UFC makes. If the UFC gave the fight to Movsar Evloev, some people would criticize it saying, \u2018Oh, but the guy hasn\u2019t fought in a year.\u2019 If they gave it to Lerone Murphy, another group would criticize it too saying, \u2018How are you going to give a title shot to a guy who just beat someone who wasn\u2019t even in the UFC?\u2019 They gave me the fight and people are criticizing it. People are never going to be happy with anything, you know? There\u2019s always going to be someone trying to criticize.\u201d<\/p>\n
Evloev, who holds a win over Lopes in the UFC, hasn\u2019t fought since defeating Aljamain Sterling via decision in December 2024. Murphy fought twice in 2025, beating Josh Emmett via decision before flooring Aaron Pico with a spinning back elbow in August.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, Movsar deserves the opportunity. Of course, Lerone deserves his opportunity,\u2019 Lopes said. \u201cThey\u2019re both undefeated, and I\u2019ve said that as well. I asked to fight them before the fight with Jean, I don\u2019t know why it never happened. For me, it really doesn\u2019t bother me. I just do my job. My idea was to win the fight in a decisive way, by knockout or submission or by completely dominating all five rounds, and to put my name on the table for a title shot. And that\u2019s exactly what I did. I ended up winning the fight decisively, put my name back on the table and the UFC pulled the card. \u2018You go.\u2019 That doesn\u2019t bother me. If people want to be angry, if they want to criticize, go complain to the UFC, not to me for accepting a fight [laughs].\u201d<\/p>\n
Should Lopes win at UFC 325, there\u2019s a good chance the promotion books a rubber match for later this year. There\u2019s also a chance \u201cThe Great\u201d walks away from the sport and Lopes faces a fresh opponent in his first title defense, too.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Volkanovski] has been saying he\u2019s not going to retire, that he wants to have a few more fights, but he\u2019s also said it depends on how this fight goes,\u201d Lopes said. \u201cHis plan is to go in there, make the fight look easy and come out without any damage, but I think it\u2019s a bit hard for him to come out of a fight with me without taking any damage. I really don\u2019t think that\u2019s going to happen. But I don\u2019t know, man. I honestly don\u2019t know what his next step will be after this fight. My goal is to win the belt. If the UFC wants us to have another fight, I\u2019ll have another fight. If he decides to retire, then it\u2019ll be up to the UFC to see who the next opponent is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lopes\u2019 main goal is to capture the UFC belt in Sydney, and being the one to end Volkanovski\u2019s career is not something he\u2019s too worried about.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t make any difference to me, honestly,\u201d Lopes said. \u201cThe only thing I hope is that we can put on a much tougher fight than the first one, a much more exciting fight than the first one. That I can walk away with the belt and that, if he decides to retire, at least he can have a retirement with a fight that was a war, one that people can remember him by saying \u2018his last fight was a war against Diego.\u2019 That\u2019s the only thing I hope for, but my goal is to win the belt.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Diego Lopes won\u2019t let critics bother him ahead of his second shot at the UFC featherweight championship against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437103,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,82,640,702],"class_list":["post-437102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437102\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}