Francis Ngannou vs. Derrick Lewis Is a Must-See Summer Blockbuster Slugfest

It's summer blockbuster season, folks.

The Avengers kicked things off by participating in their long-awaited Infinity War. Solo came along soon after and left people underwhelmed. The latest Jurassic World flick is playing down the street from you right now.

Not to be outdone (and with a perspective perhaps unique to sports given its Hollywood ownership ties), the UFC is planning a blockbuster of its own: Francis Ngannou vs. Derrick Lewis at UFC 226 on July 7.

Sure, the matchup isn't for titles or any accolades beyond heavyweight relevance, but at a time when the promotion has struggled to create stars or capitalize on the exploits of its greatest in-cage performers, it's a fight that couldn't be more valuable to a card.

The fight game is not so different from the movie industry: Star power is required, and if you don't have a star to sell, then you'd better have a good story to tell. If you don't, your product is DOA and you're going to lose millions of dollars.

The times the UFC has lacked stars or stories, it's bottomed out in a marketplace that is oversaturated to the point that "can't-miss" rarely applies to any event that brandishes the UFC banner in 2018. Pay-per-view buys are rarely what they were in the promotion's heyday, and it's changed its model to accommodate that.

Now a UFC calendar is filled with a staggering volume of events, but only a handful are stacked. The UFC transparently endeavors to rope in big audiences by offering cards with multiple title fights and big names a few times a year.

UFC 226 is one such card, sandwiched between fellow blockbusters UFC 225 and UFC 227.

On a micro level, there sits the Ngannou-Lewis fight. Nestled neatly in the middle of the UFC 226 card—one headlined by an epic heavyweight title fight between champion Stipe Miocic and light heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier—is an offering guaranteed to energize fans.

Ngannou was the fastest-rising heavyweight prospect in history a little over six months ago, but Miocic exploited him in a January title fight.

Lewis is a brawler who's never taken a backward step, beloved within the sport for his social media antics and realist perspective on this whole enterprise.

The two have been bickering for months, and the payoff is coming when the cage door is locked July 7.

It's the rare event where fireworks are guaranteed and the fistic expertise is sure to deliver. The styles clash perfectly—both men are big, bullying heavyweights who rely on vicious knockout power to finish fights and who have no interest in contesting a fight on the ground (they've combined to land only five takedowns in 20 UFC fights, per FightMetric, all by Lewis). The judges might as well ball their scorecards up and throw them into the stands on the opening bell.

It is a slugfest within a blockbuster event in a summer of blockbuster events for the UFC, and it's the type of thing the promotion provides only on occasion when looking to flex. Fortunately for fans, that's the case at the moment, and a fight like this one is the by-product.

There's no need to worry about Thanos and his Infinity Gauntlet, or where Han and Chewie go from here, or what to do when dinosaurs break out of an amusement park and take over the world.

The UFC has entered the blockbuster space, and Ngannou-Lewis will provide all you need.

Follow me on Twitter @matthewjryder!