France’s Ciryl Gane defeated Derrick Lewis to capture the interim heavyweight title in the UFC 265 main event at Toyota Center in Houston, Texas on Saturday.
With the win, Gane sets up title unification bout with champion Francis Ngannou. The two were former training partners and UFC president Dana White couldn’t be happier with the way the landscape of the heavyweight division has unfolded.
“It doesn’t get any better than this. You couldn’t write it. You couldn’t script it. Vince [McMahon] couldn’t have wrote a better script for this whole thing. It’s beautiful,” said White during the UFC 265 Post-fight Press Conference.
White would like the heavyweight clash to take place in France, but with the recent surge in COVID-19 cases causing new mandates and possible restrictions, it’s unclear whether a UFC event taking place in France is a possibility.
Francis Ngannou reacts to Ciryl Gane’s UFC 265 win: ‘See you soon boy’
“It couldn’t play out any better than it has. The only kink in the whole perfect story is the crazy shit that’s going on in the world right now,” White said. “We’ve been working a long time on getting France open. France is open. And we just got a TV deal in France…”
“In the prefect script, yes, we go to France and we do that fight there. That would be amazing. But I don’t know. We’ll have to see how it plays out.”
Dana White: ‘In a perfect script, Francis Ngannou and Ciryl Gane would take place in France’