How Derrick Lewis parlayed his sense of humor and punching power into an unexpected title shot

Stipe Miocic is outraged that he’s not getting the opportunity on Saturday in the main event of UFC 230 at Madison Square Garden in New York to challenge Daniel Cormier for the heavyweight title he lost when Cormier knocked him out in the first round at UFC 226 on July 6 in Las Vegas.

Miocic has a great argument, too.

Derrick Lewis, though, is getting the shot, which he can’t attribute to a better record or more skills or even his dramatic last-second knockout of Alexander Volkov on Oct. 6 at UFC 229 in Las Vegas.

No, Lewis’ title shot came largely because of four words he said during an in-cage interview with UFC broadcast analyst Joe Rogan:

“My balls was hot.”

The reaction to that, and other comments Lewis made that night, led to an explosion of media coverage of his win. Lewis had taken off his fight shorts and had them on his shoulder as he waited to be interviewed by Rogan. When Rogan asked him why he took his pants off, Lewis delivered his money line. He’s now selling merchandise with the phrase on it and said he’ll be paid more on Saturday to fight Cormier than he made in his previous two fights combined.

According to CrowdTangle, which monitors social media usage, Lewis had a healthy total of 433,300 followers on Instagram and 65,600 on Twitter on Oct. 5, the day before his knockout of Volkov.

The day after the fight, his Instagram followers had jumped to 525,600 and his Twitter followers ballooned to 85,400. Three days later, he’d ballooned to 1.12 million Instagram followers and 114,100 Twitter followers.

On Monday, Lewis had jumped to 1.4 million followers on Instagram and 137,950 on Twitter.

And that led to Lewis getting the fight with Cormier when the UFC desperately needed a marquee bout for its annual show at The Garden. A women’s flyweight title fight between Valentina Shevchenko and Sijara Eubanks that was being discussed to headline that show didn’t have nearly enough pizzazz for New York. Rogan admitted he had never heard of Eubanks when the UFC announced that Shevchenko-Eubanks as the MSG headliner for the vacant belt.

Lewis, who looks like he’s always fighting off a smile, freely admits that Miocic should be the one fighting Cormier.

“Of course he should be upset, because he deserves the fight,” Lewis said. “He’s a mixed martial artist. I’m not a mixed martial artist. All I am is a brawler. I don’t even train for these fights. I’m not mad when people say that because it’s true.”

Lewis is an irreverent and self-deprecating sort and it’s often difficult to tell whether he’s joking with you or being serious. At the UFC 226 pre-fight press conference, he was seated next to Cormier. Cormier was about to challenge Miocic for the title while Lewis had a hotly anticipated bout with Francis Ngannou.

Cormier noted when the news conference began that Lewis had told him in the back that he’d knock him out if Cormier won the title. When Lewis was asked about it, he said, “He disrespected Popeyes’ chicken.” It was in reference to a parody video Cormier made at the World MMA Awards in 2015.

It’s vintage Lewis. He’s a humorous guy who went out of his way to help victims of Hurricane Harvey, which decimated his hometown of Houston. Lewis saw on television that officials were pleading with residents not to call 911 unless it was a life-or-death emergency.

Hearing that made Lewis decide to go out and try to help.

“I didn’t like what I heard and so I decided to get out there and help people,” Lewis told Yahoo Sports on Aug. 29, 2017. “There were people everywhere who needed help. I just felt like I had to do something.”

On Jan. 28, Lewis posted a photo on Twitter of himself on the ground, snarling at a snake which was coiling up. He wrote, “Working on my speed.”

His sense of humor often covers the fact that Lewis has turned into a formidable fighter. He’s won three in a row and nine of his last 10, a stretch in which he earned a Performance of the Night bonus three times and a Fight of the Night bonus twice.

He shrugs off praise the way he does a punch to the nose, but Cormier knows Lewis isn’t an easy mark. Cormier has an injured hand and wouldn’t have taken a fight with Miocic because of it, but says that is not disrespect to Lewis.

“If you watch him fight, you’ll often see him pointing to his heart,” Cormier said. “And I think it’s one thing that shows in Derrick’s fights where he seems down and out, but he continues to fight, continues to fight, continues to fight, continues to fight, continues to fight and eventually, he finds it. You cannot teach that kind of heart. There have been guys I’ve fought and I’ve been grinding on them and they quit.

“I don’t think for a second that Derrick Lewis will ever quit, so I can’t just go out there expecting it to be easy. He’s a big dude who hits hard — I mean, he hits hard — and I cringe sometimes just thinking about it. You can never count this guy out and because of that, you have to be ready to fight yourself to compete with him.”

All jokes aside, that is the essence of Lewis, as the man himself admits. Volkov had the fight won as the final 30 seconds counted down and he didn’t do what many other Lewis opponents have done.

Volkov tried to land a punch and paid for it. More common, Lewis said, are opponents who try to kill the clock.

“I thought [Volkov] was going to start back-pedaling and stay away because that is what so many of these guys do,” Lewis said. “They believe if they are up on the scorecards, they just have to stay away and they’ll get the win. It’s happened a lot in my fights.

“But this isn’t the first time I won in the last few seconds. The one thing about me, if it is a 15-minute fight, I’m fighting every one of them 15 minutes. And if it’s a 25-minute fight, I’ll be fighting all 25 until the bell rings.”

And unlike most things with Lewis, that’s no joke.

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