WEEKLY REPORT 25-31/10/21: The Rise of Lerone Murphy

A very promising fighter from Manchester showed us exactly why he should be payed attention to this weekend with a stunning knockout at UFC 267 in his biggest fight yet.

30 year old Lerone Murphy who was born and raised in Old Trafford made it 11-0-1 on Saturday night after landing a perfectly timed knee on Makwan Amirkhani's chin knocking him out cold. It's Murphy's fourth fight in the UFC and has won three on the bounce too putting his name in the hat in the UFC's featherweight division.

Lerone hasn't had an easy journey to get to where he is. At the age of 16 he was on the books at Stockport County FC but a knee injury stopped him continuing with his football career and instead started boxing, a short while later he discovered MMA for the first time and started training at a gym in Hulme. When he was just 21, Lerone 'The Miracle' Murphy left a barber shop in Fallowfield, Manchester when a gunman took three shots hitting Murphy twice in the neck and once in the face. He spent a week in intensive care before having to undergo surgery which left him with a full set of prosthetic teeth and he has a tiny shard of a bullet permanently embedded into his tongue.

I am hoping that we don't have to wait that long to see Lerone in action and hopefully he can be part of the first card back in the UK since covid and has said that he hopes his next fight will be against a top 15 competitor with Alex Caceres getting quite a few mentions. Since his win on Saturday night Lerone has featured on Ariel Helwani's The MMA Hour podcast and covered some topics in more depth for those who are interested and want to know more.