The UFC will have an interim heavyweight champion as Derrick Lewis will fight Cyril Gane on August 7th at UFC 263 per ESPN’s Brett Okamoto. The news comes as a surprise considering that Francis Ngannou was not informed of the decision.
Ngannou’s management was surprised as he is just three months removed from his win against Stipe Miocic to earn the title belt. Yet, it appears that the UFC does not want to hold up the title picture with a Lewis-Gane interim fight. According to ESPN, Ngannou let the company know that he wouldn’t be ready to defend his title by August.
Gane is coming off of an impressive victory this past Saturday and the man from France could help in opening up the country to MMA if he were to get past Lewis forcing a Ngannou-Gane matchup.
Payout Perspective:
It appears that this is the latest in the UFC attempting to wrest leverage from fighters. The company has been able to juggle fights from month-to-month and week-to-week and unless Ngannou said he was injured and/or would not fight the rest of the year, the ‘interim belt’ is pointless. According to Okamoto, the UFC emphasized that Ngannou would remain the ‘undisputed’ champion while many pointed out that would not be the case if you have an ‘interim’ titleholder. The move is a flex by the UFC that would reverberate to other titleholders that they can and will do this.
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