Late last month, Russia’s very best heavyweight fighter challenged “The Black Beast” Derrick Lewis to a fight in Moscow.

That fighter was of course none other than Alexander Volkov who seemed to be next in line for a title shot until Daniel Cormier and Brock Lesnar came along.

Volkov having not fought since March when he defeated the former UFC champion Fabricio Werdum isn’t looking to be out for a whole year. Which led to his challenging of Lewis which initially was directed at Curtis Blaydes.

Blaydes who is currently recovering from his big UFC 225 win over Alistair Overeem wasn’t ready to go for when Volkov was looking to fight again and the Russian was hoping to return home. In rather comedic fashion, Lewis replied to Volkov’s challenge saying, “Black man in Moscow?!?! F*ck that. come to the USA”.

And it appears that that’s how it will be as ESPN reports that the fight is close to finalization for UFC 229 on October 6th and will be the event’s co-headliner.

Lewis’ last fight came at UFC 226 in the co-main event to the big Cormier vs Stipe Miocic super fight.

In the said co-main event, Lewis and his opponent Francis Ngannou put on one of the worst “fights” in UFC history as the two barely engaged over the course of three rounds. In fact, the two only landed a combined 31 total strikes and attempted a combined 100.

Just for a recent comparison, in the three minutes and 36 seconds that Alex Perez vs Jose “Shorty” Torres lasted this past Saturday at UFC 227, Perez landed 88 strikes and threw 166.

Of course, the evening’s headliner will be the highly anticipated UFC lightweight title fight between champion Khabib Nurmagomedov and Conor McGregor. So again Lewis will get a pretty big fight to follow him up after he competes.

 

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 8/7/2018