COCONUT CREEK, Fla. – Shortly after Junior Dos Santos beat him via second-round TKO in their UFC on ESPN+ 4 headliner, Derrick Lewis went into surgery to repair ligament damage on his left knee.

The injury worsened in the battle, but it wasn’t new. Lewis discovered a torn ACL two weeks before the meeting with Dos Santos and believed he’d been fighting with a hurt knee for four years, stemming from a kneebar applied by Ruan Potts at UFC 184. The damage included MCL and meniscus tears.

Well, he could have fooled Dos Santos.

Speaking to MMA Junkie during a recent visit to American Top Team’s headquarters, the former UFC champion Dos Santos said he couldn’t tell Lewis had been dealing with such issues by the way he fought.

“Actually, man, he was looking like a gazelle. He was jumping everywhere,” Dos Santos said with a laugh. “It’s a very strange thing to say but, man, good that he did the surgery and I hope everything goes well, because everybody likes to watch him fight. He’s a tough dude, strong man. And let’s move forward.”

The win over Lewis (21-7 MMA, 12-5 UFC) put Dos Santos (21-5 MMA, 15-4 UFC) on a three-fight streak after a failed title bid in a May 2017 rematch with then-champ Stipe Miocic. After the Lewis win, Dos Santos expressed his interest at giving a new shot at a fight with Francis Ngannou (13-3 MMA, 8-2 UFC), and he ended up getting it.

The two are slated to meet on July 6 at UFC 239 in Las Vegas (make what you will of this recent tweet by Dos Santos). Dos Santos is currently ranked No. 3 in the latest USA TODAY Sports/MMA Junkie MMA heavyweight rankings, while Ngannou appears at No. 6.

The bout only was reported after MMA Junkie’s visit to ATT, so Dos Santos didn’t address it specifically. But he did address, rather emphatically, his determination to do “whatever it takes” to reclaim the heavyweight title he held between November 2011 and December 2012.

“For me, it’s very important,” Dos Santos said. “Not just to become the champion, to live that amazing moment to become the champion. But also, to make sure that everything that happened in the past were mistakes. I have everything that it takes to be the champion and to stay there for a long time. All these guys, they’re not better than me. They are tough guys, I respect all of them, but I’m here to be the champion, and I have everything it takes to be the champion.

“Being the champion again will show everybody that what happened in the past was just a mistake. It was just a lack of attention of myself. The only way I feel like you get beat is not being in the right time to do the things, the right time mentally and physically. I think that’s what happened in the past, and I make sure that everything’s going to be all right now.”

To hear more from Dos Santos, check out the video above.

And for more on UFC 239, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.