When Sean O’Malley weighed in on Lerone Murphy’s stalled title hopes, he didn’t sound bitter. He sounded realistic, almost resigned. Because if there’s one thing ‘Suga’ has learned during his own rise, it’s this: winning fights is important, but navigating the business matters just as much.

So when the unbeaten featherweight was passed over yet again for UFC 325, O’Malley wasn’t shocked. He was nodding along.

Appearing on the MightyCast podcast alongside Demetrious Johnson, the former bantamweight champion was drawn into a broader conversation about undefeated fighters getting left behind. It started with Johnson bringing up Muhammad Mokaev, another unbeaten talent who mysteriously fell out of favor with Dana White and the promotion.

“I don’t know… Mokaev… I remember that whole situation was weird,” O’Malley said in the clip shared on X by Red Corner MMA, “I don’t… is he still undefeated or? He was a beast.”

Johnson confirmed that Mokaev hadn’t lost, and that’s where the conversation widened. He pointed to Lerone Murphy’s situation as an even clearer example of the disconnect between merit and opportunity.

The flyweight legend didn’t mince words. Murphy, he argued, is on a “f—- what, 9, 10 fight win streak” and still hasn’t sniffed a title shot. Meanwhile, others leapfrog the line after one big win. He even questioned recent title opportunities across divisions, bluntly asking why fighters with fewer wins were being rewarded while long streaks were ignored.

That’s when O’Malley stepped in and grounded the discussion in reality with, “I think it is a business at the end of the day. It’s like if you’re in the UFC and you work for the UFC, you don’t…talking bad about the UFC, talking s— about the UFC is never gonna benefit you. I mean, I think that’s why Mokaev’s not in the UFC right now. I mean, the best case thing to do for someone like Lerone Murphy is, you know, say okay, what’s next, who else do I gotta fight to get a title shot.”

That wasn’t a defense of the system. It was an explanation of it. And that brings it back to Lerone Murphy.

The undefeated Brit didn’t throw a tantrum when Diego Lopes was booked to challenge Alexander Volkanovski at UFC 325. But he didn’t hide his disappointment either. After knocking out Aaron Pico at UFC 319, Murphy believed he had done enough. Instead, he watched Lopes, coming off a recent title loss to the same man, get another crack.

Lerone Murphy opens up on the impact of UFC 325 snub as he points to Dana White’s “business move”

Speaking on The Ariel Helwani Show, Lerone Murphy admitted the UFC’s decision shook him more than he expected. “When I first found out, I fell out of love with it for a bit. I’m not going to lie,” Murphy said. That line mattered. Because it wasn’t frustration about one fight, it was about belief.

He explained why the snub hit so hard. “I got into MMA over boxing because I thought there’s no politics. I thought it was simply do the work, the best fight the best.” That illusion cracked the moment Diego Lopes leapfrogged him.

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“That’s what hurt me the most a bit,” Murphy added.

For a fighter sitting at 17-0-1, with nine straight UFC wins, that realization lands heavy. So what do you do when merit doesn’t immediately pay out? Murphy chose reflection over resentment.

“Then I thought it over, and it’s like, get over it. It is what it is. It’s business,” he said.  That perspective echoed exactly what Sean O’Malley had hinted at earlier. Don’t fight the machine, outlast it.

However, Murphy didn’t stop there. He also tried to make sense of the why. And in his view, the answer wasn’t performance-based because, “All I can think is they want a Mexican champion. They must have seen the numbers that (Brandon) Moreno pulled in, or even Lopes pulls in. It’s a business move, and it can only be that, really.”

That’s the tension at the heart of this story. Fans want meritocracy. Fighters want fairness. The UFC wants momentum and market pull. Somewhere in between, careers are shaped by patience as much as punches. Do you think Dana White and the promotion made the right call? Let us know in the comments below!