Derrick Lewis To Miss Most Of 2019 With Rare ACL Injury

Former UFC heavyweight title challenger Derrick Lewis will miss most of 2019 with a partially torn ACL that will require surgery.

Shorty after Lewis lost to Junior dos Santos at this month’s UFC Wichita, news of “The Black Beast’s” bum knee started to surface. Earlier today on “Ariel Helwani’s MMA Show,” Lewis confirmed the injury and explained the depth of it (h/t MMA Mania):

”My ACL is partial tear and my meniscus and MCL is all the way torn,” Lewis said. “So the ACL is hanging on by a thread, really. It’s a rare tear, they say. The doctors say the way the angle of the tear is, my knee was bent the opposite way, so I told them about my fight with Ruan Potts, he got me in a kneebar and it was pretty tight and I heard it pop when he did it.

“But I still got out of the submission. And they said they could tell it was a few years since the injury happened because the way it was growing back, it wasn’t growing right.”

The Potts fight went down in February of 2015 to give you some context as to what Lewis has been dealing with the past four years. However, he insists that his performance has not been affected until recently.

”The Daniel Cormier fight, I couldn’t stop the takedowns. I didn’t have any strength in my leg,” Lewis said. “I wanted to step my training up before the JDS fight, so I was doing a bunch of things I normally don’t do in training and it was really bothering me. And I told my coaches, ‘Man, my knee is still pretty weak.’”

”I guess it has gotten worse over time so I went to the doctor two weeks before the fight to do x-rays and stuff like that, and the UFC had set everything up. The doctor told them what was torn and what was going on with my knee. And the UFC, all they was worried about was whether I was going to fight.”

”I told them ‘Yeah I’m going to fight, don’t worry about it.’ And they called again the next day asking if I’m still gonna fight. I say ‘Yeah, I’m still going to fight. Don’t ask me no more, I’m still going to fight.’”

His coach, Bob Perez, didn’t agree with Lewis.

”He didn’t want me to fight,” Lewis said. “I told them I’ve been fighting like this for a long time and there ain’t no way I’m going to back out now two weeks before the fight. I pulled out before due to an injury, I was in a real bad state of mind right after that. I hate doing it.”

When he does get healthy and return to action, you better get used to seeing a slimmer version of “The Black Beast.” Lewis plans on dropping some unwanted weight in his time off.

”250 would be the ideal weight,” Lewis said. “So I’ll be in a bed at least a month straight, so hopefully I lose some weight then. Popeyes don’t deliver, so we’ll see what happens.”