Next week's UFC 252 event will be headlined by Stipe Miocic vs. Daniel Cormier III. It's the most important UFC heavyweight championship fight in the organization's history and also one that will end with at least one of the competitors retiring. "DC" has already confirmed this will be his final fight, and reigning champ Miocic has hinted at it too.

In light of that, the UFC is looking to find the next big thing at 206lbs, and headlining the latest Fight Night at the UFC APEX facility in Las Vegas was #4 Derrick Lewis and #10 Aleksei Oleinik.

On paper, the fight was set up in favor of Lewis. Known as "The Black Beast", going into the fight he had a record of 23-7 with one no contest, and of those, 19 of the wins came by KO/TKO and four of his five losses since coming to the UFC have come to top competition, including to then-champion Cormier. Not only that, but Lewis is also known for his charisma, often providing funny post-fight interviews. He's the type of guy the UFC could use in a division that is otherwise dominated by fighters who don't speak much English or simply don't have much of a personality.

His opponent, Oleinik is a Ukrainian-born Russian who now lives in Florida. At 43-years-old he is eight years older than his opponent and has been fighting since 1996 - a time when the sport was known as No Holds Barred (NHB) rather than Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) - and entered the fight with an astonishing 59-13-1 record.

As with Fabricio Werdum, who is also 43-years-old and still winning fights, his success comes from his incredible grappling and submission game. Of those aforementioned 59 wins, 46 have come by submission, earning him the nickname of "The Boa Constrictor".

As the two men squared up before the opening bell, the size difference suddenly became clear. In terms of height, only an inch separates them; in terms of weight, it's 40lbs. Lewis weighed in at 265lbs, which is the maximum a fighter can be in the UFC's heavyweight division, Oleinik, on the other hand, looked svelte at 227lbs.

He looked to use that bulk at the start of Round 1 as he came out blasting Oleinik with a high kick and punches. The Russian then did as expected and pulled Lewis toward him to try and work for a choke. In less than a minute, Lewis had overpowered him and threw him to the floor.

This is where the real battle took place as Oleinik repeatedly used his combat sambo and BJJ to find positions to try and find chokes, and Lewis looked to escape and apply a ground-and-pound. However, by the end of the opening five minutes, Oleinik looked frustrated; it wasn't Lewis' skills that prevented his chokes from working, he was just so big that his neck and shoulder area was too big for his trademark Ezekiel and scarf chokes to work.

Oleinik needed something special in Round 2. Instead, he got caught instantly with a big right hand and absorbed 13 seconds of nonstop strikes before referee Herb Dean called the fight. This TKO win gives Lewis the record for most KO/TKO stoppages ever in the UFC's heavyweight division. It isn't a win he should be proud of, however. In both rounds, Lewis very clearly hit Oleinik with illegal punches to the back of the head and, upon review, it looks as if it was those that knocked the Russian out rather than the clean strikes he ended with.

Lewis is now on a three-win streak, repeatedly showing that his size and power are for real, however, his fighting style, which is focused on little more than overpowering his opponent suggests he's too one-dimensional and needs to improve his "fight IQ" before he can handle the division's elite.