Derrick lewis seems to be in a good headspace after a win over Chris Daukaus recently banished the disappointment of a convincing loss to Ciryl Gane a few months earlier, and he’s now seeking a major match-up with former heavyweight champion Stipe Miocic next.
“This last fight helped me,” Lewis said on The MMA Hour show. “It was a big experience difference and I just wanted to finally go into a fight week and not put pressure on myself, and it felt great. I plan on doing that for the rest of my career — just go out there and have fun. I feel like I don’t have to prove anything and that’s one of the reasons why I want to fight Stipe next. I believe that would be a great matchup for the fans and for both of us. He’s more of a wrestler, and I’m more of a wrestler, too. So it would be a great, entertaining fight.
“I’ve fought just about everyone in the division in the top-10. It’d be a new face, new blood, and I believe I’d be a heavy underdog in this fight. I can get my fans their money back from the Gane fight.”
Lewis also claims that there’s a lot of people who are rooting against him, and he’s now using that as motivation to prove his doubters wrong.
“I’ve got a lot of people rooting against me, a lot of family members, a lot of haters,” Lewis said. “I’ve got to use that energy to really push myself forward, so that’s what I’ve been doing.
“After that fight [with Gane], I didn’t even have to change my number because nobody was hitting me up to go hang out, or this and that. As soon as I win, everybody, and their mommy and daddy, uncles, cousins, everybody is calling me. Whenever I lose, nobody wants to talk to me, nobody wants to be around me. That’s fine with me.”
Miocic is currently without a fight, but it’s likely he will be eyeing an opportunity to face the winner of this month’s heavyweight title fight between Francis Ngannou and Ciryl Gane next, although Jon Jones also has his eye on that spot too, so either way there’s a lot of big potential match-ups brewing at the top-end of the division heading into 2022.
