Lerone Murphy has responded to the first defeat of his professional career after losing a majority decision to Movsar Evloev in their five-round main event at UFC London.<\/p>\n
Murphy was beaten on the judges\u2019 scorecards at the O2 Arena, with two officials scoring the bout 48-46 in Evloev\u2019s favour and a third returning a 47-47 draw after a point deduction for fouls, extending the Russian\u2019s unbeaten record to 20-0 and prompting immediate discussion about a potential title shot.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust watched the fight back,\u201d Murphy wrote on X, followed by a laughing\/sweating emoji. \u201cCongrats to Evloev either way.\u201d<\/p>\n
The result has been widely debated, with UFC Hall of Famer Michael Bisping among those disputing the outcome after calling the fight live. \u201cI\u2019ll just get to the point: I thought Lerone \u2014 and I\u2019ve got nothing against Movsar, and this is not me being biased, for all the American fans \u2014 I thought Lerone should have won that fight,\u201d said Bisping, according to his YouTube channel<\/a>.<\/p>\n He added: \u201cI thought he won the first three rounds. I thought Movsar didn\u2019t pick it up and really start going for it until Rounds 4 and 5.\u201d<\/p>\n Bisping also pointed to the impact of Evloev\u2019s point deduction when assessing the final scoring. \u201cNow, maybe I\u2019m wrong, but there was the point deduction. So, should it have been a draw? Because if it\u2019s two rounds apiece, and let\u2019s just say Movsar won three out of [five], well then, he\u2019s essentially lost one of them because he loses the point. So, if anything, it should have been a draw, in my humble opinion,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Despite the controversy, Evloev\u2019s victory positions him as a leading contender in the featherweight division, with Alexander Volkanovski already being discussed as a potential next opponent following the result in London.<\/p>\n Media scoring further highlighted the split opinion on the bout, with all 17 submissions tracked by MMA Decisions favouring Murphy or a draw, underlining the ongoing debate surrounding the judges\u2019 verdict.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lerone Murphy has responded to the first defeat of his professional career after losing a majority decision to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":557308,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,638,82],"class_list":["post-557307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557307","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=557307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/557308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}