Francis Ngannou is looking to get back to his winning ways this weekend.
The UFC has confirmed that Derrick Lewis would fight the former title contender at the upcoming UFC 226 pay-per-view event. Ngannou is attempting to build off his latest lost coming into this fight.
As seen at the UFC 220 PPV (pay-per-view) event at TD Garden in Boston, Massachusetts on pay-per-view, UFC heavyweight champion Stipe Miocic successfully retained his title in the main event by scoring a dominant decision win over the title contender.
Ngannou was gassed after the first round and lost in a lopsided fashion. Following the fight, Ngannou made it known that this fight was a major learning experience for him.
With his upcoming fight against Lewis, Ngannou strongly believes that he has all of the advantages over “The Black Beast” going into this heavyweight showdown.
“I collected a lot of experience and I learned a lot from that fight,” Ngannou told Helen Yee recently (transcript courtesy of MMA Fighting). “This is something that would have happened anyway someday because my rise was very fast, so I jumped a lot of things. I didn’t discover somethings that would catch me later. At some point I can even say it’s the best thing that happened because if it didn’t happen in that fight, it might happen in the future. Now it happened this time. We take it, we learn it, we stand up, we move forward. That’s how life is.”
“What advantages do you think I have over Derrick Lewis? All of them,” Ngannou said. “Of what you can imagine, I think I have all that over him. He said I knocked [Andrei] Arlovski out because he’s old – he was 37. Mark Hunt was 43 when he beat [Derrick Lewis]. Hunt made him quit. I think [Lewis] just doesn’t know what he’s saying.”
“I would just get my conditioning on point. What I’ve got already will be okay.”
UFC 226 is set to take place on Saturday, July 7, 2018, at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Who are you picking to win this fight? Sound off in the comment section.
