Lerone Murphy doesn’t expect his division to have a new champion come February.
There’s a big UFC featherweight title looming, with Alexander Volkanovski defending his belt in a rematch against fan favorite Diego Lopes. The bout serves as the main event of UFC 325, which is scheduled to go down on Feb. 1 at the Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney.
Advertisement
Murphy (17-0-1 MMA, 9-0-1 UFC) believes the result will be the same as the one we saw last April, but does leave a small chance for things to be different.
“I see it going the same way, to be honest,” Murphy told Demetrious Johnson in a recent interview. “Obviously, Diego supposedly hits hard, so he has a puncher’s chance in any MMA fight. He’s dangerous, we already know that. But if they fight 100 times, I think Volkanovski wins 95. That’s my opinion. I believe Volk comes out of it if he fights a smart fight.”
Many thought Murphy would be the one to challenge Volkanovski at UFC 325, given he’s unbeaten and coming off one of the best knockouts of 2025 when he viciously stopped Aaron Pico with a spinning elbow. However, the UFC went with Lopes, who had bounced back from the Volkanovski loss with a TKO win over Jean Silva in September.
“If you look at Diego’s last fight with Silva, he was getting rocked,” Murphy said. “He was getting rocked. And yeah, he was getting rocked. I think Volkanovski is a very, very smart fighter. If I watch that fight with Silva and I see so many openings in Diego’s defense, so many openings. I would love that fight. I can’t wait to get that fight as well. So yeah, I need to keep winning.”
Advertisement
Volkanovski defeated Lopes in a unanimous decision when the two met last spring. Murphy thinks Lopes should alter his game plan vastly if he wants a chance at dethroning “The Great.”
“He’s nasty, he’s nasty (on the ground), but he doesn’t use it,” Murphy said. “He stands and bangs with everyone. It would be very different to see if he changes with gameplan because I don’t think he’s a high-level wrestler, but I think his grappling is nasty. He needs to create more scrambles, more chaos, and hopefully catch a neck or catch the back or whatever he needs to do. But like I said, he stood in front of him, and that’s just a horrible game plan against somebody who’s slick on the outside and moves.”
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Lerone Murphy: Volkanovski beats Lopes 95 times out of 100
