A heavyweight encounter between Derrick Lewis and Blagoy Ivanov has been targeted for UFC 244 at Madison Square Garden in New York City on November 2nd.
Lewis is coming off back-to-back defeats heading into this fight, although he has been competing at the top-end of the division, first losing out by second round submission to current champion Danielo Cormier and then being TKO’d by former titleholder Junior dos Santos in March.
However, before the ‘The Black Beast’ had racked up a trio of wins against strong opposition, including TKO’ing both Marcin Tybura and Alexander Volkov alongside a decision victory over Francis Ngannou, and as such he still holds down the No.5 spot in the division.
As for Ivanov, he’s currently on a two-fight winning streak that’s seen him earn a unanimous decision victory over Ben Rothwell and follow that up with another win on the scorecards against Tai Tuivasa back in June.
Like Lewis, Ivanov has as loss within the last year to dos Santos in his UFC debut, but other than that he’s won 7 of his last 8 fights and is currently the No.10 ranked heavyweigt in the UFC.
Lewis vs. Ivanov is expected to be made official for a UFC 244 card that currently has no fights confirmed so far.
