Derrick Lewis: Fight Wraith
The UFC’s “Black Beast” has the ability to render his opponents’ fighting styles suddenly irrelevant. And then they die.
“I understand the reason why it was so cold in Houston,” H-Town native Derrick Lewis said after his show-stopping knockout win against Curtis Blades Saturday at UFC Fight Night in Las Vegas.
“Because my hot balls wasn’t there the whole week. Y’all was freezing. So I’m coming back [to Texas] tomorrow.”
Now that we have this true historical fact out of the way, let’s talk about what happened before that — and about 30 other times over the previous decade.
Blaydes, perhaps the premier wrestler in the UFC’s heavyweight ranks, entered the night’s main event as a 4-to-1 favorite. It’s not like Lewis, a power striker whose grappling aesthetics may be most politely described as idiosyncratic, didn’t know the odds; he just didn’t care.
Forget that, as a +350ish underdog, he scored the biggest betting upset in a UFC main event since Michael Bisping vivisected Luke Rockhold in their June 2016 rematch. It’s more a matter of how he did it.
Through some manner of strange, dark magic, Lewis did what he’s done to more than a few dangerous fighters with clearly-defined fighting styles over the years: render that style entirely irrelevant, as if it’s naught but a cute, quaint idea.
Because Derrick Lewis is MMA’s resident wraith.
By definition, a wraith is a ghastly, spectral figure you see right before you die. But unlike Tolkien’s Nazgûl, Derrick Lewis doesn’t just kill you — he kills your style. Your whole damn approach to professionally sanctioned violence.
Oh, you want to shoot, eh? You think a double-leg takedown sounds good, huh? With that skinny, torqueing uppercut, Lewis uninstalled Blaydes’ operating system. He decommissioned his power plant. He didn’t cancel his wrestling as much as he cancelled wrestling as a concept.
Here’s how the conventional wisdom goes: a high-level wrestler/grappler is the ultimate kryptonite for a striker waiting around to square up for that one big killshot. Recently speaking, think Kamaru Usman vs. Jorge Masvidal or Khabib Nurmagomedov vs. literally anyone. From an MMA judging perspective, ragdolling in the clinch and dialing up takedowns remains a modest inefficiency in the system as it pertains to wearing down power-hitters, keeping things relatively boring, and winning through subtle technical execution.
And time and time again, Lewis has proven that your “training” and your “game plan” might just apply to everyone in MMA other than himself.
On a very special night in 2018, Alexander Volkov did “everything right” against Lewis, showcasing a keen striking arsenal and taking advantage of a serious edge in height and reach. Then, in the final 20 seconds of their 15-minute scrap, the Black Beast pressed CTRL+Z.
He undid the motherfucker. That’s how wraithing works. On the way to banishing you to the shadow realm, he undoes you.
He’s basically a twangy vampire. He’s Shang Tsung in a Chevy Silverado. He’s the Dip from Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
Acetone, turpentine… and hot balls.
Your years of nigh-dogmatic training, your cute little colored belts with their dumb stripes… washed away like tears in rain with one Texas-sized overhand right. Derrick Lewis is a man who pummels you not merely into unconsciousness, but into a blurry, vaguely-defined version of yourself. His violence is not just physical, but semiotic. Epistemological.
But casting an awry gaze at the Beast’s sheer transgressiveness, it’s arguable that his against-run-of-play knockouts aren’t even the most striking aspect of his wraithing.
Watch what fucking happens here. Who on planet earth has the combination of inhuman strength and raw audacity to find himself in a dangerous position on his back and just kind of stand up after taking all the time he cares to take to catch his breath? The man may as well be reading the paper and whistling while he does it — whatever “it” is called.
It’s got to be downright demoralizing for the Roy Nelsons of the world to negotiate positioning and control on the mat only to watch Lewis pick up the cosmic cable box remote and press that nifty 15-second jump-back button as many times as he likes.
This is not to say that the man is unbeatable; far from it. Daniel Cormier, famous for an all-around game with no real weaknesses, managed to get on Lewis’ back and choke him out. Even Tolkien’s Ringwraiths were vulnerable to getting stabbed in the face by plucky ladies, after all.
But at this stage of the Beast’s career, the Cormier result only goes to show that it might just take an all-time legend to paint Lewis into a stylistic corner.
In the meantime, if you’d prefer to wrestle with the Beast, you may as well try to box with god.
This man is a tubby trickster. A fisty phantasm. A harbinger of haymakers. Logic, knowledge, and meaning implode on themselves in the pull of his gravity.
One day, we’ll learn. But it’s far too late for Curtis Blaydes. That is a deleted man.
