It’s finally official: top featherweight contenders Movsar Evloev and Lerone Murphy will fight each other in the main event of UFC London, going down on March 21st, 2026.
Evloev and Murphy are ranked No. 1 and No. 3 respectively on the 145 pound rankings, and champion Alexander Volkanovski has been calling for a fight against one or another since he beat No. 2 ranked Diego Lopes the first time in April 2025. But as of now there’s no guarantee the winner of Evloev vs. Murphy will get the next shot
at Volk.
Lerone Murphy discussed the situation with Ariel Helwani, revealing there was no title shot guarantee that came with the main event booking.
“Eeeeh, at this point, words are wind, innit?” Murphy said. “The division is forever changing. It’s a performance-based company, someone’s got to go out there and put on a good fight and then? Nothing’s concrete. But I hope so.”
The UFC has been hyper-focused on excitement as a metric for earning title shots, and Murphy suggested it would be hard to earn an exciting win off an opponent like Movsar Evloev.
“I believe the matchmakers know what kind of match this is,” he said. “I think it would be unfair to say you’ve got to go out there and get a crazy knockout to get a title shot. Everybody knows what kind of fight this is going to be and what type of fighter I’m fighting against. So I think the winner should be undeniably next in line for the title. Simple.”
If there’s one person out there banging the drum for Movsar or Lerone to get a shot, it’s Alexander Volkanovski himself. If excitement and popularity is the metric, then it would be easy for UFC to slot No. 6 ranked Jean Silva into a title fight. But “The Great” is clearly unenthused about that fight.
“You’ve got Silva obviously probably trying to get his name out there,” Volkanovski said in a new interview. “Now he’s saying some stuff and thinking he really deserves next. If the UFC obviously were to push that for me, everyone knows me. I’ll fight anyone. But I don’t think that’s very likely to happen.”
“I don’t think he’s in a position to fight for the title, especially when you’ve got Lerone Murphy and Movsar Evloev fighting very, very soon. I think that’s very clear.”
Only if you’re looking at things in terms of win streaks and rankings and not social media popularity and action. The winner of Murphy vs. Evloev may leave London with a ten fight win streak compared to Silva’s one. But Silva surfed on his opponent’s back at the end of his last fight, which we must admit was pretty cool.
Cool enough to earn a title shot? In today’s UFC, maybe.
