Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) heavyweight champion, Daniel Cormier, will tell you he’s fighting Derrick Lewis in the UFC 230 pay-per-view (PPV) main event because the promotion was desperate for a bankable headliner and “DC” was good enough to do them a solid.
Challenger Derrick Lewis, however, is not so sure.
According to the “Black Beast,” Cormier stuck around at heavyweight to defend his title while avoiding an inevitable third fight with longtime 205-pound rival Jon Jones, who stopped “DC” in the UFC 214 championship main event back in summer 2017.
“I think he’s scared to fight Jones, the guy beat him twice,” Lewis told MMA Junkie. “The reason I think he took the fight with me is because Jon Jones was already fighting. They’re already saying he’s basically scared to fight Jones right now, anyway. He feels like it would be perfect to fight a guy like me that don’t have as much skills on short notice before the Jones fight and he thinks it’s going to be an easy fight for him.”
Jones scored a knockout win over Cormier when they last fought but had the finish overturned after United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) popped him for Turinabol. “Bones” was also slapped with a reduced sentence that expired earlier this month.
He’s now scheduled to rematch Alexander Gustafsson in the UFC 232 main event, a title fight the will be contested for Cormier’s light heavyweight strap — relinquished as a result of the Lewis fight — unless “Black Beast” upsets the apple cart this Saturday night (Nov. 3, 2018) in New York City.
I kinda hope he does, just to see this.