UFC 230 will be held at one of the most substantial venues on the planet; Madison Square Garden, in New York City. Considering this, you'd think that the company would have put together a solid main event to head up the otherwise rock-solid fight card.
Until three days ago, we had an exciting match between a hungry Dustin Porier (coming off of a FOTY win over Gaethje) and Stockton bad boy Nate 'Don't give a shit' Diaz set to be an exciting Co-main event, unfortunately for fans of the fight game, Porier had to pull out due to injury.
Then out of nowhere, a fight gets announced as the main event and it's a doozy; champ-champ Daniel 'Popeyes Chicken' Cormier Vs Hero of Houston - Derrick 'My balls was hot' Lewis. And if this card wasn't insane enough for MSG before, it is now.
With Cormier pulling off some of the most impressive feats we've ever seen; Not only did he take the Heavyweight belt from the most dominant HW Champ of all time, Stipe Miocic, but he did it in less than 5 minutes via KO. Oh and also? He did it all whilst retaining the Light Heavyweight belt. This put him into the top spot of the pound-for-pound rankings and rightly so. Immediately after becoming champ-champ, DC was challenged by former UFC HW champ and current WWE Superstar, Brock 'Suplex City' Lesnar. However, it was pretty common knowledge within the MMA community that Brock was so juiced up on steroids that he had muscles on his muscles. Due to Lesnar needing time to get clean, we knew there would be a long wait before they squared off. And that's why this announcement was so surprising. The other side to this insanity is Cormier's opponent, Derrick Lewis.
Derrick Lewis is one of the UFCs most curious characters, entertaining both within the octagon and out. With 5 total performance/fight of the night bonuses, The Black Beast has a unique fighting style which always pleases the crowds (except for that one fight, we won't talk about that). No matter how tired or damaged this man is, you can never count him out. He always has enough power stored in his hands to knock anybody out. Just check out his last fight with Alexander Volkov, a technically impressive Russian giant, who had every right to feel confident going against Lewis, for almost 15 minutes Volkov picked away at Derrick, playing the smart game, and ever-so-nearly getting the knockout. But with 10 seconds left, The Black Beast threw a hail mary, with perfect timing, resulting in the knockout victory.
The victory over Volkov had a shocking end, but I don't think anybody, not even Lewis, could have predicted he'd be fighting for the title, at Madison Square Garden, less than 1 month later.
Real talk; it is insane.
We'll get to the other fights on the card in the coming weeks. Until then let's hope everybody stays injury-free and ready to rumble.