UFC heavyweight Derrick Lewis revels in labels that would be offensive if they were attributed to him. He calls himself The Black Beast. He beats his chest in homage to a gorilla after he wins. When asked to assess his last fight he replied, I need to sit my black ass down and do some more cardio, I ain’t trying to fight for no title right now. Not with no gas tank like that. When asked why he took his shorts off, he explained it was because, “my balls was hot.”
Lewis immediately added hundreds of thousands of new fans on his social network. And in a not unrelated step, he got a title shot at Champ Champ Daniel Cormier. In a recent interview with Michael A. Fletcher, senior writer at ESPN’s The Undefeated, Lewis was asked if he worries that his routine plays into racial stereotypes.
Not at all, he replied. I used to train at a gym called the Silverback, and basically that is the way I fight. I fight like a gorilla. … If anything, I am probably just talking down on myself, saying I’m a gorilla. But it is one of my favorite animals anyway. That’s why I don’t mind.
Lewis came from a difficult childhood in New Orleans. His mother eventually took the six siblings to Houston, leaving his step father. If that hadn’t happened, Lewis acknowledges he might have killed his abusive step father. As he got older, he took his life frustrations out on the street.
I was almost [street fighting] as a hobby, he said. I would put myself in situations where I knew trouble could pop off at any given moment.
He got in one fight too many, was given probation, violated it, and went to jail for 3 1/2 years. Lewis got out and started driving a tow truck, and started to box. That learning curve looked over long, so in 2010 he started MMA, and had a remarkable aptitude for it, although his initial paydays were a few hundred dollars. As he matured as a man and a fighter, ironically, it became harder to fight in some ways.
It is a different kind of adrenaline to fight professionally than to fight someone in the street, he explained. It is real hard to get myself in a mood to fight somebody who hasn’t done anything to me. .. What I think about – the money. My family depends on me for taking care of them with the bills and all that. I am in it for them, to make sure they have a better life than I had.
This is one of the fights when I am 100 percent not worried. Usually, I’m worried that I am going to lose, because that means I am going to lose 50 percent of the check. This time, I’m getting paid a flat fee no matter if I win or lose. So I’m good.
