Derrick Lewis is coming off his second straight main event win in the UFC as he defeated Travis Browne in the main event of UFC Fight Night 105.
The “Black Beast” is looking to the future now and that includes another surging heavyweight in Francis Ngannou.
“Because this America, you know they like to see black-on-black crime,” Lewis said on The MMA Hour. “They thrive on that. They love that. Since me and him are ranked close to each other, I would like to fight someone who’s more of a challenge, and I believe Mark Hunt is more of a challenge. Me beating Francis is not going to really boost my stats or anything, get me closer to the belt, because he hasn’t really fought the top guys yet. He only fought one guy. But he is running through guys.”
In his first main event appearance for the UFC, Lewis defeated Shamil Abdurakhimov at UFC Fight Night 102. Lewis commented on Browne’s alleged domestic violence situation from 2015 in his post-fight interview at UFC Fight Night 105, as domestic violence has been a part of Lewis’s life for a long time.
“Since I was probably eight years old, just about everyday, all the way until I was 14 or 15 years old, just about everyday my mom and my stepdad would roll around in the living room fighting,” Lewis said. “It was all the way until I was like 13. Back then I just used to just try to, like, pull my mom off, pull him off my mom, and just cry and stuff like that. And whenever I was 13, then I just started swinging on him whenever he started attacking my mom. That’s one of the reasons why we moved to Houston. We were living in New Orleans. That’s the reason why we moved to Houston, to get away from him. [My mom] knew I was going to kill him if we didn’t move to Houston. She said she’d seen that look in my eyes, that she knew I was going to kill him. And I believe I was too, so everything happens for a reason. So I thank God we did move out of that situation.”
Ngannou last competed at UFC On Fox 23 and he defeated former UFC Heavyweight Champion Andrei Arlovski by first round knockout.
