Credit: Lauren Murphy IG
Lauren Murphy responds to boos following UFC 247 win
Whether you agreed with the decision or not, Lauren Murphy is one step closer to fighting for the UFC women’s flyweight title after a three round battle of attrition with Andrea Lee.
The women’s 125-pound bout took place during the ESPN preliminary portion of UFC 247 on Saturday night in Houston, Texas. After a bloody battle, Murphy picked up a split decision win and her second consecutive victory in the process.
In a recent interview with BJPENN.com, Lee said that she plans on appealing the decision. The reason behind the appeal doesn’t stem from Murphy’s performance, or the fact that Lee lost the fight. After a night full of controversy in Houston, “KGB” is hoping that appealing the decision will shed some light on a glaring judging and scoring problem in the sport of MMA.
Murphy joined MyMMANews.com to discuss the victory, how she’s feeling just days after the win, how she felt the fight went round-by-round, the moments leading up to the decision being announced, the scoring in MMA in general, the moment she was really hurt in the fight, being proud of her performance overall and much more.
“Lucky” knew the fight was very close and, admittedly, felt like the decision may not go her way since she has been on the wrong end a few times before in her career. In terms of how she felt on Saturday night, the now Houston native feels she had done enough to get her hand raised and has incredible respect for Lee.
“I felt like I deserved it,” Murphy told MyMMANews.com. “I felt like I deserved the win. I, honestly, felt like I had won rounds one and two, and if [Bruce Buffer] had called Andrea’s name, it would’ve been one of those situations where it’s like, ‘all right, they just didn’t see it the way I saw it’, that’s it. I’m hoping Andrea feels that way about the fight, too, because it was a super close, competitive fight. I don’t think she should be disappointed in her performance at all. She had a great performance, I had a great performance. It was awesome.”
While there was certainly a lot of good that came Murphy’s way on Saturday night, there were some negatives as well. Following a 15-minute war, Murphy was met with a chorus of boos from the Toyota Center crowd. The boos didn’t take away from how Murphy felt about the decision, or the fight itself. She does feel, however, that the fans of Lee who showed their disapproval of the decision may have cost their fighter some extra money in her bank account.
“My only real regret about the fight, or the thing I wish I could change, is I wish the fans hadn’t booed at the end,” Murphy explained. “Maybe if I had been wearing a f****n cowboy hat, maybe they would’ve cheered or whatever. I just thought that the booing was so inappropriate and s****y, and all of those Andrea Lee fans probably f****d her out of $50,000. If they had cheered our fight and gotten on their feet, cheered us on and stuff, then we probably would’ve gotten ‘Fight of the Night’.”
Following the win, Murphy had called for fights with Roxanne Modafferi and Joanne Calderwood to get a step closer to fighting Valentina Shevchenko for the UFC women’s flyweight title. Shevchenko defeated Katlyn Chookagian via third round TKO in the co-main event of UFC 247. Chookagian is a prior opponent of Murphy’s, and in a pre-UFC 247 interview with MyMMANews.com, Murphy stated that she would love to get that fight with Chookagian, who was victorious in their July 2016 fight.
When asked who Murphy would choose if it were up to her, it would have to lean more towards what the result would ultimately lead to.
“Whichever one, if I win, gets me to the title,” Murphy said. “That’s really the only thing left at this point. Katlyn would be a tough fight. I think Valentina looked monstrous on Saturday, first of all, but Katlyn is good. It would be a tough rematch and they’re all tough fights. I’ll fight any of them.”
Check out the full interview with Lauren Murphy following her split decision win over Andrea Lee at UFC 247 in the video above.
