Ciryl Gane stops Derrick Lewis in round three, claims interim HW title at UFC 265

The Ultimate Fighting Championship returns to us tonight, August 7, 2021, for UFC 265, headlined by an interim heavyweight championship bout between No. 2 ranked Derrick Lewis and No. 3 ranked Ciryl Gane.

Lewis comes into this bout on a four-fight win streak, while Gane comes in 9-0 as a professional, having gone 6-0 inside the octagon in just two years. He looks to become the first French-born champion in UFC history tonight, but he has an incredibly dangerous task in front of him.

You see, Gane is 13-0 as a professional kickboxer as well, but Lewis harder than anyone else in the sport, aside from Francis Ngannou, and all it takes is one shot for him to put literally anyone in the world out.

Lewis has become a true anomaly in the sport, because not only does he win some fights he shouldn’t, but he can be losing the whole fight to someone better, and KO them out of no where. He’s done it a number of times.

Does Lewis secure a victory in his hometown of Houston, Texas, or does Gane spoil the party and face his former teammate in a champion versus champion clash?

Continue reading to see how this heavyweight title fight went down:

Official Result: French-Anthony Joshua def. Texas-Ngannou via TKO (punches) at 4:11 of round three

Round 1

Gane is controlling the center, getting his kicks going, as is a wise thing to do against a shorter, harder-hitting Lewis.

Lewis does march forward a few times to try and time a big shot, but Gane is quick to evade and get himself back to kickboxing range. It was a relatively dull round, but Gane made a ton of reads throughout the first five minutes.

Round 2

Gane gets a little more busy in round two, and lands a vicious jab that bothered the eye of Lewis. The Frenchman then starts throwing some round kicks to the leg of Lewis, and is having a great deal of success with it.

It appears Lewis is having issues with Gane’s size, array of attack, and sheer athleticism. He just can’t touch him, yet of course. We will see, time will tell.

Round 3

Gane is landing a lot of hard, hard leg kicks throughout this round, and they’re certainly taking their toll on Lewis.

Gane then stuns Lewis with a nasty jab-uppercut-left hook combo, and that spelled the beginning of the end for ‘The Black Beast’. He was hurt badly by it, and he held on for about a minute while he was hurt, but he couldn’t take the onslaught of the best striker in the division.

Ciryl Gane is your new UFC interim heavyweight champion.

If you enjoyed this piece, please feel free to share it on social media!

Brady Ordway

I became a fan of combat sports when I was 12 years old. I was scrolling through the channels and landed upon Versus, where WEC was televised. Urijah Faber fought Jens Pulver for the second time that night. That's the first fight I ever saw, and I was immediately hooked. So eventually, I began covering the sport in the fourth quarter of 2018, and have since started writing about animals as well. If you'd like to see those pieces, be sure to check out learnaboutnature.com!

See Full Bio