Winning has long been the best cure for respect and validity in sports. Top UFC featherweight contender Movsar Evloev has exclusively resided in that circle of success. Still, he has yet to sniff a world championship at the MMA pinnacle.
Evloev’s golden pursuit hasn’t been due to a lack of effort. Undefeated in 19 professional fights dating back to 2014, the Russian mauler rides an impressive nine-fight stretch within the UFC ahead of his first main event opportunity at UFC London on Saturday. Standing in his way is the equally impressive talent, Lerone Murphy, who hasn’t tasted defeat in his entire 18-fight career since 2016.
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Pitting two undefeated entities against each other is always a recipe for excitement. In the case of this clear-cut 145-pound contender duel, Evloev firmly believes it’s the best fight across the board — with or without a title on the line.
“Whether we get the belt for this or not, obviously, we’re not fighting for a championship. But I think that the work that he’s put in up until now, the experience that he’s went through, the experience that I lived through as a fighter, I think this is a championship-caliber fight,” Evloev told Uncrowned through an interpreter. “We’re doing the five rounds; we’re not getting the hardware for it, but there’s no other way to look at it, as this is what the two champions fighting for the belt would look like. So, with everything that we have to put into this specific fight, I think this is straight up the highest level of the game. Both him and I are looking at this as important as if it was already a fight for the title.
“If you take away all of the hype and all of the media that’s behind it, if you just look at it as two sportsmen going at it, this is the highest level of the sport. Just on the competition level, there’s no higher level of competition in this division than Lerone Murphy vs. Movsar Evloev right now. “
Movsar Evloev has a point to prove in his first UFC main event. (Photo by Cooper Neill/Zuffa LLC)
(Cooper Neill via Getty Images)
Evloev and Murphy suddenly splashed into awkward waters last year when linked to a matchup with then-UFC-newcomer Aaron Pico. For Evloev, the fight was a massive head-scratcher when a title fight felt inevitable. He ultimately fell ill for three weeks, forcing him to go a full year without fighting — the first time in his career.
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Murphy, on the other hand, replaced Evloev and cashed in what appeared to be a surefire title fight lottery ticket. The Brit stunned Pico and the collective MMA world when he nailed a devastating spinning back elbow, like a stake to the former Bellator staple’s forehead. Done and dusted. Murphy delivered Uncrowned’s knockout of the year, simultaneously extending his UFC win streak to the same length as Evloev’s at nine.
Résumés and performances aside, Evloev and Murphy now have to kill off the other to seemingly secure a fight against reigning champion Alexander Volkanovski. Even then, Evloev says he hasn’t been told that the fight promises an opportunity for the winner to challenge the champion.
“The most important thing in this one is victory,” Evloev said. “It doesn’t even matter that this is not a title shot. I don’t even know what’s next. If they tell me that this is not for the No. 1 contender, if they tell me that after this fight: You’re never fighting again. You know, what’s most important is that I’m gonna come out there and I’m gonna do everything that’s in my power to show what level of the game that I’m at, to show what kind of an athlete I am, to show what kind of a fighter I am. I will do anything to claw this victory away because this is the most important thing right now is winning this fight against Lerone Murphy on Saturday.”
In the meantime, both contenders were left shocked by what transpired. Instead of a clash with either, which Volkanovski openly called for, UFC went back to the well with a rematch for Mexican Brazilian contender Diego Lopes.
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Besides the statuses of Evloev and Murphy in play, Lopes had lost to Volkanovski only one fight prior to his second title shot, with Volkanovski having occupied the sideline since their first clash. From Evloev’s perspective, he’s let any animosity with Lopes dissipate after he welcomed the superstar talent to the Octagon in 2023.
Evloev isn’t bitter, but he believes the matchmaking decision was proven questionable by the time Lopes suffered another unanimous-decision defeat at UFC 325 in February.
“He was in the right place in the right time,” Evloev said. “He beat somebody like Jean Silva the right way. He put him away. And in the first fight against the champ, he was very competitive. He showed that some of the rounds he actually took from him. He showed that he has a chance to become a champion if he’s given an opportunity. So here he was, putting away Jean Silva, and now he’s got a second chance to fight the champ. And it seemed as though he just didn’t show himself. He didn’t show any kind of improvement. I feel like he was in the worst position in the second fight than he was in the first go around.
“I lost my chance. I already said that before. I’ve missed my opportunity, and what happened happened. So he got to fight for it, but I don’t think that he showed anything exciting afterwards.”
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To focus on the excitement factor of the sport, Evloev has arguably been called into question most for winning all nine of his UFC fights via decision. Meritocracy has been a dead concept in MMA for many years, demanding higher risk to score rewards. And fans won’t be shy about letting contenders hear it online.
Thanks to his intensely consistent training throughout 2025, Evloev assures he drowned out the noise in grueling improvements. And with two more rounds to work in his first UFC headliner, he’s fully prepared to make a Murphy-like statement seen in the would-be Pico duel of yesteryear.
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“Not only do I not pay attention to [the criticism], but I didn’t even have a chance to pay attention to it,” Evloev said. “This was one of the most intense camps that I’ve had. A very important camp for me for my own development. There’s all this crap going on with the Visa and things that I had to go through with the documents and the last-minute changes and this and that, that I, even if I wanted to — which I don’t in the first place — I don’t pay attention to this. This is not what it’s about.
“Obviously, I’m gonna come out there, and the goal is to win. If I see the finish, I will get that finish. The second I have an opportunity, I will go for the finish. But what I’m not gonna do is I’m not going to risk and make silly mistakes just to prove somebody wrong and to shut somebody down. This is not what I’m there for. It is not my style. It is not my way of playing this game to risk just to appease somebody else so they can say that this way he has a finish. This is not how I come up. This is not how I approach the fight. If there’s a finish, I’ll take it. If not, I will do whatever I can to get the victory.”
