Derrick Lewis isn’t the backup plan for UFC heavyweight Francis Ngannou.

But if Lewis doesn’t get Ngannou a title shot, he can step aside.

The reason Ngannou wants to face ex-champ Brock Lesnar, he told MMAjunkie, is because the ex-UFC champ is the perfect mix of challenge and reward.

“Right now, I have a goal,” Ngannou said of his recent callout. “I’m the No. 1 contender. I just lost a title shot, and my goal now is to come back to the title shot. So everything that I set up is to get the title shot.”

Ngannou (11-2 MMA, 6-1 UFC) and Lewis (19-5 MMA, 10-3 UFC) have traded barbs on Twitter, suggesting a potential fight could be on the horizon. Ngannou doesn’t shoot down the idea, but he’s only open to the matchup if it reverses his trajectory in the UFC’s heavyweight title picture.

“If they tell me, you have to take Derrick, I’m going to take Derrick,” Ngannou said. “I’m not just going to take everyone and say, ‘OK, let’s fight this one for nothing.’ I want a plan. It doesn’t matter who it is. If the UFC says that Derrick will be that one (that gets me a title shot), I’ll fight Derrick. I don’t have a problem to fight anyone else. I just want to keep looking forward.”

For momentum, there might be few better choices than Lesnar (5-3-1 MMA, 4-3-1 UFC), which is why Ngannou hopes to entice “The Beast Incarnate” to fight if he’s indeed headed back to the octagon. The 31-year-old Cameroonian wants to prove his previous performance against Stipe Miocic isn’t who he is as a fighter.

Miocic (18-2 MMA, 12-2 UFC) grounded and pounded Ngannou over five rounds to defend his title with a dominant decision in January at UFC 220. The loss brought an unceremonious end to the challenger’s meteoric rise in the promotion and raised questions about his ability to compete with top-tier heavyweights.

That’s a big part of why Lesnar is Ngannou’s first choice. If he’s able to stop the massive Lesnar’s inevitable wrestling attack, he’ll do much to answer critics who say he doesn’t have the skills to be champ.

“I don’t think my problem is wrestling,” Ngannou said. “I can’t believe my wrestling is bad. I think my wrestling defense is good. I think I can prove it, and maybe not in this fight, but I have had a very good strategy of wrestling defense for my previous fight. I can show that Brock won’t hurt me to show that my wrestling defense is not bad.”

Ngannou strongly believes it’s not his skills that failed him against Miocic, but his ability to manage his energy over five rounds. He said a shortened training camp, ill-advised trip to France three weeks before the fight and endless media obligations left him exhausted even before he stepped in the cage.

Next time out, he said, “I won’t have 8,000 miles with eight hours of jet lag three weeks before the fight. I’m not sure my next fight will be the main event like that, but the thing that I’m sure of, I’ll try to set it up to prepare myself for it, to make it a better way to deal with it. It was my first experience, and it was so much.”

Only one week into full-time training, Ngannou hasn’t had time to make many meaningful changes for his next fight. But he’ll be ready in three months – right around the same time Miocic defends his title against light heavyweight champ Daniel Cormier at UFC 226. That should at least keep him on the same schedule as the champion.

“The biggest thing I will change is how to manage,” Ngannou said. “I still believe I had a good training camp for that fight, but I didn’t manage very well, so that’s what took my energy. Everything about that fight was about my cardio.

“People say, ‘Your ground game, your wrestling,’ but I believe I have not the best one, but I have a good one. I’ve been showing that for earlier fight. The fact of this (Miocic fight) was the management of my cardio and my endurance. I came into that fight already tired because of a lot of stuff going on.”

For more on the UFC’s upcoming schedule, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.