The holidays are a time for giving. Yet in the UFC, tis also the season of taking away, which is why you might pour out some eggnog for the lightweight No. 1 contender Arman Tsarukyan. If you thought he was getting the title shot he was promised, sorry about that, but the UFC is going with Justin Gaethje vs. Paddy Pimblett for the interim lightweight belt to kick off the new Paramount+ era in January.
Tsarukyan, it might be remembered, submitted Dan Hooker in the second round of what was meant to be a title-clinching fight in Qatar all the way back a week ago. Turns out, that was a red herring. Dana White’s big Thanksgiving announcements during halftime of the Cowboys-Chiefs game confirmed what we already knew — that the UFC loves itself some Justin Gaethje.
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Tsarukyan? Pssht. That dude can be placed on hold.
If that weren’t bad enough, a couple of the best featherweights in the world will spend the holidays with their noses smudged up against the glass, left out in the cold. Diego Lopes will get the next title shot against Alexander Volkanovski, not Movsar Evloev. Not Lerone Murphy. Neither of those undefeated, undeniable contenders. It’s perhaps not a great look when the champion himself is pointing out the injustices of the matchmaking, yet even Volkanovski can spot the UFC’s little parti pris when it comes to Diego.
If the meritocracy wasn’t all the way dead already in the UFC, it is now.
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The thing is, there will be clumsy justifications floating around. Lopes, much like Gaethje, loves the UFC. He shows up at all the events, and his dimples never look better than when he smiles for the cameras. The UFC loves Diego Lopes. He’s a happy assassin who can be plugged into the Mexican market or the Brazilian, depending on what’s needed. It was him who headed up the Mexican Independence Day card in San Antonio in September, when he knocked out Jean Silva. The UFC has been trying to get Lopes fitted for a nice belt to go with his cowboy hat, one with a big shiny buckle. We’re talking really big. Like, the size of a gold platter!
It’s perhaps because of this mutual love that Lopes gets another crack at Volk while the other schlubs mash their fists. Lopes will fight Volk for the second time in nine and a half months at UFC 325 in Australia on Feb. 1. In speaking with him last December, Diego was excited by the notion of fighting Volkanovski in Australia. He said he had a case of what the old-timer’s called “wanderlust.” When he ended up losing to Volk in Miami last April, the pink flamingos were a small consolation. This time he gets his wish to meet Volk on his own soil.
Sorry, Movsar, but your case won’t be heard — even though it’s a hell of a case. You might recall that Evloev beat Lopes back in 2023, which feels like it should mean something to this situation. Or at least the general pecking order. That hasn’t been Evloev’s experience, though. He has won two fights since beating Lopes — decisions over Arnold Allen and Aljamain Sterling — which has advanced him … nowhere.
With all nine of his victories in the UFC having come by decision, the UFC made an executive one of its own. They went with Lopes, who, to his credit, has fought seven times since that debut loss to Evloev. Lopes beats Evloev in the realm of staying busy, even if he didn’t beat him in a literal fight.
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But what about Lerone Murphy? Not all of Murphy’s wins have come via decision. He knocked our Ricardo Ramos way back in the day, and clobbered Makwan Amirkhani early in his nine-fight winning streak. He was tasked with facing Aaron Pico in August and needed only three minutes and change to put the one of Bellator’s most hyped crossover fighters on the dream flow with a spinning back elbow. That can’t be accused of being boring. If that didn’t land him a title shot, nothing will.
Yet Murphy doesn’t have the magnetism of Lopes, and he can’t come correct with charisma because he has none to spare. He’s the proverbial fighter who lets his fists do the talking.
These are meant to be exciting times, this transition out of the world of pay-per-view, but it’s a bit of a bummer to kick off the new era with a disregard for those who’ve done all that’s asked of them. And it was sad to see the responses. Evloev is so used to the idea of being overlooked that his reflex was to jump on social media and challenge Murphy to a No. 1 contender’s fight.
That’s the response of a man who knows gold isn’t his mineral, and thus has become an expert in silver linings. It didn’t help that not even Movsar knows Lerone’s name. If the UFC ends up booking that fight, it would be to kill off a contender that perhaps they don’t want to do business with anyway. Though if they did, one of those guys would be fighting for a title next.
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Instead, while the division speeds off in a different direction, two of the best fighters going are left spinning their wheels.
