Derrick Lewis: “Daniel Cormier is scared to fight Jon Jones right now”
At UFC 230 this Saturday night, Derrick “Black Beast” Lewis will fight in his first major main event headliner as he faces Daniel Cormier for the UFC heavyweight championship.
While nobody including Derrick Lewis himself ever expected to receive a heavyweight title shot this soon, he does understand why it happened, as he went on to explain at last night’s UFC 230 open workouts.
Lewis stated, he believes the actual reason for him getting his opportunity this weekend is simply because Daniel Cormier is afraid to fight Jon Jones again.
“The reason I think he took the fight with me is because Jon Jones was already fighting,” Lewis said. “He didn’t want to wait until January and hear all the media talk about, ‘Why is Cormier not fighting for the 205 belt?’ They’re already saying he’s basically scared to fight Jones right now, anyway. He feels like it would be perfect to fight a guy like me that don’t have as much skills on short notice before the Jones fight and he thinks it’s going to be an easy fight for him.”
As we all know, Jones is scheduled to make his return to the UFC at UFC 232 in December when he faces old rival Alexander Gustafsson in what will now be for the UFC light heavyweight title, as it’s been rumored that Cormier will be stripped of the 205 pound belt on the night of the fight.
However, Cormier has mentioned recently that should he lose his UFC heavyweight title to Lewis somehow, he would go back down to 205 pounds and defend that belt again.
Regardless of what the circumstances pertaining to the UFC light heavyweight championship are, Lewis thinks one thing is perfectly clear, Daniel Cormier does not want to fight Jon Jones for the third time being that he’s already beaten Cormier on two separate occasions.
“Yeah, I think he’s scared to fight Jones,” Lewis said. “The guy beat him twice.”
