Less Than One Month After Saying "I Ain't Trying To Fight For No Title," Derrick Lewis Will Fight For The Title

Great news, fight fans! Derrick “My Balls Was Hot” Lewis—who was so out of shape and exhausted after knocking out Alexander Volkov last weekend that in his post-fight interview with Joe Rogan, when asked about a title shot, he said “fuck what you talking about right now, I ain’t trying to fight for no title right now, not with no gas tank like that”— will face heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier in the main event of UFC 230, in November.

Sort of hard to take this seriously as a title fight. Lewis was damn near dead on his feet against Volkov at UFC 229, and was reduced to sort of planting himself fatly at roughly arm’s length and absorbing massive punishment for most of the final two rounds, before landing a brain-busting haymaker right with 17 seconds left in the fight. Before that punch landed, Lewis was losing badly, and he acknowledged after the fight that his conditioning was for shit.

Lewis is now slated to face ESPN’s number one pound-for-pound fighter less than a month after that stirring performance. Cormier, for his part, is expected to face either Brock Lesnar or Jon Jones in a megafight in 2019, but reportedly wanted to get another bout in before the end of this year. On paper, at least, this should be nothing more than a tuneup, against an out of shape veteran who could barely stay on his feet against a far less dangerous fighter. We can be reasonably sure that a month is not enough time to recover from the last fight and overhaul a conditioning program, but I guess there’s always that overhand right? Quite the legitimate sport you’re running there, Dana White.