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LAS VEGAS – Diego Lopes wants to run things back with Movsar Evloev.
Lopes (24-6 MMA, 3-1 UFC) pushed Evloev to the brink when he stepped in on short notice in his UFC debut in May 2023. Since then, the 29-year-old rising star has scored three-straight first-round finishes, most recently a TKO of Sodiq Yusuff Saturday at UFC 300.
As he continues his ascent up the featherweight ladder, Lopes thinks it’s time he got to rematch Evloev (18-0 MMA, 8-0 UFC), and he wants it June 29 at UFC 303.
“Movsar (Evloev) is next at International Fight Week, give me the rematch,” Lopes told MMA Junkie and other reporters at the UFC 300 post-fight press conference. “I think that the first fight speaks for itself, and I think that the fights that came after that I think they say I deserve a rematch against Movsar.”
Evloev is coming off a unanimous decision win over Arnold Allen at UFC 297 in a performance UFC CEO Dana White called the “least fun fight anybody’s ever seen.”
Lopes took aim at Evloev’s fighting style in campaigning for the rematch.
“I think it’s actually really funny that he actually went on social media and said that my greatest feat was actually to have a fight against him,” Lopes said through an interpreter. “I went back on social media and told him, well your greatest feat is make Dana White like a fight that you’re involved (in). It’s just that I was involved.
“I like to call him ‘Decision Man.’ I even coined a term ‘Mr. Decision.’ I think his work speaks for himself, and my work speaks for myself.”
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 300.
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