Derrick Lewis Thinks Francis Ngannou Was Scared Of Taking A Shot!
Francis Ngannou and Derrick Lewis fought at the co-main event of UFC 226. The fight was one of the biggest disappointments ever. Unlike Kimbo Slice and Dada 5000, who were throwing punches underwater, Ngannou and Lewis basically did nothing for 15 minutes.
Derrick Lewis was flared up with a back injury. USADA recently approved steroids for it, and he could have an excuse. But Francis Ngannou confessed that he carried the fear from the fight versus Stipe Miocic at UFC 220 into the one versus Lewis. Here is what Derrick Lewis noticed. (via MMAFighting.com)
“To me, whenever he stepped inside the Octagon, he looked scared from the get-go,” Lewis explained Monday on The MMA Hour. “He wasn’t the same guy that I saw at the weigh-ins. Like, his facial expressions and his emotions and everything, it wasn’t the same. So all of that right there, that threw me off in the fight too, because I didn’t believe that he was really that scared of me, but the look in his eyes, it really did show that he was scared.”
During 15 minutes, Francis Ngannou threw only 11 strikes, which didn’t even scratched Lewis’ face. In the title match against Stipe Miocic, The Cameroonian was hit more than 200 times to the head in a 25-minute war. Derrick Lewis confesses he was confused by Ngannou’s performance too.
“I was confused too. I tried to make him engage,” Lewis said. “I did a couple of things to try to make him engage, and he just wouldn’t do it.
“I tried to do a little bit more than him and it just was weird to me too, the whole fight, so I don’t know. I don’t know what was going on.
“I believe he was scared of taking a shot,” Lewis added.
Immediately after the fight, Lewis was very critical towards himself. But after he finally watched it, he claims it wasn’t as bad as it was spoken. He believes the fans were expecting three rounds of bloodshed. That simply didn’t happen. Derrick Lewis also commented on Joe Rogan’s statement “the worst UFC Heavyweight fight I have ever seen”.
“I finally watched it, and I thought it wasn’t that bad. Not the way that Joe Rogan was making it sound like,” Lewis said. “It wasn’t that [bad], I’ve seen worse fights than that. By him saying that, then that’s what everybody else believes — ‘oh yeah, that’s the worst fight ever.’ Man, it’s not even the worst fight ever. The only reason why I guess they’re saying that it’s the worst fight ever is because they expected so much between me and him, they expected fireworks the whole three rounds and it wasn’t. I expected the same thing. I was disappointed that it wasn’t an entertaining fight as well.”
Derrick Lewis will fight a dangerous striker, Alexander Volkov. They are set for the co-main event of UFC 229 on October 6, 2018, at T-Mobile Arena in Paradise, Nevada. If he defeats Volkov via brutal KO, maybe he won’t be the icon of negative comments anymore.
When asked about Ngannou’s terrible performance, Derrick Lewis stated he has never seen anything similar in the world of MMA.
“Never. Never,” Lewis said. “And hopefully it will never happen again.”
What do you think, can Derrick Lewis ever erase the negativity that followed UFC 226 co-main event? After all, you don’t see the fight of two frightened kids every day!
