NEW YORK — Because his heavyweight title fight with Daniel Cormier came together under pressured circumstances to save UFC 230, Derrick Lewis’s improbable rise has gone woefully understated. An ex-convict who did time at the Central Unit in Sugar Land after a harsh childhood in Louisiana, Lewis has the kind of triumphant story that only the fight game can tell — a reversal of fortunes so complete that his past life barely registers as real.
Lewis was teetering on becoming a forgotten soul, and now here he is fighting for the heavyweight title.