British fighter who won with spinning elbow at UFC 319 was shot in face twice and 'spat out bullets'

A British MMA fighter who won his encounter on the main card of UFC 319 to remain unbeaten once remarkably survived being shot in the face.

The United Center in Chicago hosted UFC 319 with the middleweight championship bout between Dricus du Plessis and Khamzat Chimaev headlining the main card.

And Chimaev maintained his unbeaten MMA record to win the UFC Middleweight Championship following a unanimous decision after the fight went the full five rounds, with all three judges marking the fight as 50-44 in his favour.

Chimaev was awarded Performance of the Night and is the 31-year-old's first title in the UFC, with Du Plessis having held on to it since defeating Sean Strickland at UFC 297 in January 2024.

Also on the main card of UFC 319 was a featherweight bout between British fight Lerone Murphy and American Aaron Pico, which took place immediately before the Chimaev and du Plessis fight.

Murphy, 34, is from Manchester and maintained his unbeaten record in MMA with a knockout win in the first round against Pico, winning with a spinning back elbow.

It means Murphy's impressive record stands at 17 wins from 18 matches, with the other being a draw.

Of the 17 victories for Murphy, eight have been by knockout and nine came via a decision.

But Murphy is arguably lucky to still be here following a terrifying incident back in 2013 when he was aged just 21.

Lerone Murphy knocks out Aaron Pico at UFC 319. (Image: Getty)

He was outside a barber shop with his friends in the Manchester suburb of Fallowfield and was shot in the face and neck three times.

Remarkably, Murphy survived the incident and admitted he 'spat out the bullets' in the immediate aftermath before going to hospital for treatment.

Though he has since moved on from the incident, he now has prosthetic teeth and still has a small part of the bullet lodged in his tongue.

Speaking to the Manchester Evening News last year, he said: "I just lived a different life when I was younger.

"Ended up getting shot at 21 years old and the rest is history. I think I started training nine months later towards the end of that year. I didn’t get into MMA because of that, it got brought to me I believe by the higher powers and it just put me on a new path.

"Yeah, a bit of shrapnel yeah (in his tongue still). I don’t feel it any more but I used to. It’s just there, lost in there somewhere."