You just never know what’s going to show up on Derrick Lewis’ colorful Instagram account.
The fan favorite does have his staples, though.
There’s the constant “he’s ok” posts referencing any viral clip of someone getting hurt badly in a wild way, but able to walk away from it.
There are also the regular “Herb Dean fault” posts, referencing the epic line he dropped after putting Curtis Blaydes to sleep via a devastating second-round knockout in February. Lewis said the three words in response to the hard right hands he landed after Blaydes was already knocked unconscious and before the revered Dean could protect the fallen fighter and stop the bout.
But there was a moment that he commemorated last month that was different, yet classic Derrick Lewis all in one shot. The IG footage shows the celebrity likes of Justin Bieber, Megan Fox, Steve-O and Victoria Secret models congregating backstage at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas for the Dustin Poirier-Conor McGregor trilogy. Lewis isn’t partaking in the conversation at all. Instead, he’s seated off to the side, enjoying some “good ass food.”
“It was meatballs, shrimp, caviar — just some rich people stuff,” Lewis tells DAZN News in retrospect of the July 11 post. “If you was there, I probably would have thrown some under the table for you. You gotta be in a different tax bracket to taste stuff like that. I felt real pleasure.”
Well, Lewis can foreseeably keep pushing toward that tax bracket and those indulges with a win Saturday night. That’s when Lewis (25-7, 1 no contest) clashes with the undefeated Ciryl Gane (9-0) in the headliner of UFC 265 at the Toyota Center in his hometown of Houston and live on pay-per-view. The interim heavyweight championship of the world will be on the line.
The likes of Junior dos Santos, Jairzinho Rozenstruik and most recently Alexander Volkov in June have all tried and failed to upend Gane, as the French fighter has a diverse portfolio of three wins by knockout, three victories by submission and another third by decision accounting for his unblemished record.
Lewis isn’t fazed at all.
“Just like everyone else — he just hasn’t run into me yet,” Lewis says bluntly.
“He’s just going into decisions,” he continues, leaning on Gane outlasting Volkov and Rozenstruik his last two fights. “The way his fighting style is, he’s not really trying to finish the fighter. He’s just going out there doing karate, kickboxing and trying to win by points.
“His opponents just don’t see that. I know I see straight through it. I’m going out there looking for a finish and for it to be a very exciting fight for myself.”
“Exciting fights” are seemingly any and every fight involving “The Black Beast,” who reigns as the UFC’s all-time heavyweight knockout leader with 20 on his highlight reel. And those KOs come in an assortment of ways, whether it's a buzzer beater as shown by his October 2018 evisceration of Volkov with 11 seconds left or sending Blaydes to orbit to launch his 2021 campaign.
That being said, Lewis was seemingly tickled over learning about Gane’s recent comments, as the third-ranked heavyweight told MMA Junkie last month that No. 2 Lewis is “not going to touch me” and “I touch him and he never touches me,” in trying to preview their Aug. 7 fight.
“I really don’t believe that’s what he meant to say because he really don’t speak English that good,” offers Lewis, dismissing the French fighter’s confidence. “His translation to that didn’t sound right, so I didn’t believe what he was saying anyway. He didn’t mean to say that.”
Lewis’s obliteration of Blaydes combined with a fallout of negotiations for a Francis Ngannou-Jon Jones heavyweight championship tilt could have certified “The Black Beast” challenging for Ngannou’s title straight away. After all, the Blaydes bout had Lewis enduring some early turbulence before shutting his lights off with a vicious right uppercut, which was followed by two blasting right hands.
Still, Lewis isn’t irked about having to clash with Gane for the interim title first.
“I’m not annoyed at all because I feel like everything happens for a reason,” Lewis affirms. “I’m fighting Gane now and then I could fight Francis again later this year.
“If I was fighting Francis for (this) weekend, then I would have to wait a whole year, next year some time to fight Jones,” he continues. “Now, I get two big paychecks for this year to fight for the belt, so I’m happy with that.”
Within that, Lewis couldn’t care less if Ngannou is bothered by it, as the heavyweight champion expressed in a pair of tweets regarding never getting an interim title shot himself prior to becoming the titleholder.
Lewis counters that by offering: “(Ngannou) shouldn’t have been an assh—e toward the UFC staff. “If he wants to keep going back to Africa and playing in the sand, that’s on him. We’re going to keep it moving. We got a business to run. We ain’t playing around with him.”
He reminisces upon defeating Ngannou by unanimous decision back in July 2018, but not with fondness.
“I remember I took a bunch of muscle relaxers and I couldn’t really get it going,” Lewis says about the co-main event that took place on the original Daniel Cormier-Stipe Miocic fight card. “Other than that, I just know it was a boring fight.”
If successful handing Gane his first loss, Lewis promises more fireworks in a rematch against Ngannou.
“Of course. That’s the plan,” he forecasts. “I’m way more healthier than I was then. It would be a great fight. It would be a great performance against him. That last performance against him, ya’ll wouldn’t even remember that — guaranteed.”
In order to even broach running it back with Ngannou, Lewis must become the first fighter to solve the complex technical puzzle that is Gane.
As of Tuesday morning, the undefeated Gane is projected as the -350 favorite to Lewis’ +280 underdog by BetMGM. That's despite Lewis having nearly four times the amount of professional fighting experience than Gane.
“I don’t care if anyone else don’t believe in me,” he says. “I believe in myself and I believe I could get the job done.”
Getting the job done with another highlight KO would certainly make for a welcomed IG post.