Lerone Murphy: ‘My Aim’s Been Volkanovski for Six Years’

When Lerone Murphy found out he wouldn’t be fighting for the title in his next outing, he took the news hard.

Murphy (17-0-1 MMA, 9-0-1 UFC) seemed like the clear choice to challenge UFC featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski (27-4 MMA, 14-3 UFC) after Volkanovski reclaimed the belt he’d held from 2019 to 2024 with a dominant win over Diego Lopes last April.

Murphy thought he’d sealed his title shot when he scored a spectacular spinning-elbow knockout over former Bellator standout Aaron Pico at UFC 319 in August. But when Dana White announced last week that Volkanovski is set to face Lopes for the second time when the UFC returns to Sydney, Australia, on January 31, Murphy was devastated.

“When I first found out, I fell out of love with it for a bit, I'm not going to lie,” Murphy told Ariel Helwani. “I got into MMA over boxing because I thought there's no politics here. I thought it's just simply ‘do the work, the best fight the best, and that's the way it goes.’ That's what hurt me the most at the end of it, and then I kind of thought it over, and it's like, ‘get over it, it is what it is, it's business, just keep fighting, keep doing what you're doing, keep winning. And we'll get there eventually.’ And I think it's inevitable that it's going to happen. I'm long going to be champion. And my role's never been easy from the get-go, from being a kid. My role's never been easy.”

Wins over notable names such as Edson Barboza, Dan Ige, and Josh Emmett have pushed Murphy to the business end of the UFC featherweight rankings. And while he remains front and center in the title picture at 145 pounds, the U.K. standout believes he may miss out on the opportunity to face Volkanovski inside the Octagon, regardless of the outcome of the UFC 325 main event in Sydney.

“I'm here to fight,” Murphy said. “I'm here to challenge myself. I love fighting, I love challenging myself, so the next challenge will come. The only thing I'm pissed about is not getting the opportunity to fight against Volkanovski. I know he's going to retire after this, so I've always wanted to (face him) since I got signed to the UFC in 2019. My goal was to go against Volkanovski, that's when he became champion. So the last six years, I know he got beat by Topuria, but the last six years, my aim's been Volkanovski.

“I need to get to that level, that's my goal That's been repeating in my head when I'm training, whatever, whatever, but to get that. That's the only thing I'm bothered about. I'm not bothered about the money and whatnot. I want to fight against Volkanovski. I want to say I beat Volkanovski. That's it.”