Volkanovski Camp Expected Murphy, but UFC Chooses Lopes for Title Fight

The news that Alexander Volkanovski is set to face Diego Lopes for the second time in just nine months came as a surprise to much of the MMA world, including the champion and his team.

Dana White announced on Thursday that Volkanovski (27-4 MMA, 14-3 UFC) will make the first defense of his second featherweight title reign on January 31 in Sydney against the man he defeated to claim the belt last April. Lopes (27-7 MMA, 6-2 UFC) rebounded from that loss at UFC 314 with a knockout win over Jean Silva at UFC Paris in September and now leapfrogs two unbeaten contenders, Movsar Evloev (19-0 MMA, 9-0 UFC) and Lerone Murphy (19-0-1 MMA, 9-0-1 UFC), to earn another shot at the champion.

From Volkanovski’s perspective, he and his team had been operating under the assumption that he would be facing Murphy at UFC 323 on December 6 in Las Vegas…something his coach Joe Lopez confirmed.

“That's what all the reports were,” Lopez told Submission Radio. “That's what kind of like Alex was talking about. That's what they'd given us. Probably, I'd say... a week or two after Diego's fight (against Jean Silva), they put that on the table to us because initially we were going to be fighting in December. We were going to headline this December card, and we were all set for that. We thought it was going to be either Movsar or Murphy or the winner out of Murphy and Aaron Pico.

“So we had that sort of, it was going to be out of Murphy or Pico, maybe a Movsar, but we didn't really have much hope on that. And then, when Murphy had that spectacular KO (over Pico), we said, 'Yeah, it's Murphy,’ you know, and all indications and everything led to Murphy. Till Diego had his spectacular KO. Everything changed.”