UFC Vegas 36: Do or Die for Darren Till, Championship Contender
With one win in the last three years and a difficult matchup against Derek Brunson on tap this weekend, the 28-year-old from Liverpool needs a victory if he hopes to remain a title contender
Darren Till is one of those fighters whose reputation and standing currently exceeds his results.
The 28-year-old Liverpool native, who takes on Derek Brunson in the main event of this weekend’s early offering in Las Vegas, is talked about as a legitimate title threat in the middleweight division; someone who could be next in line for a championship opportunity, and looms as a potential serious threat to current champion Israel Adesanya, who, in conjunction with his team, has been leading conversations about Till being a possible title contender.
Till is 1-3 in his last four fights, which extends back nearly three full years to the night he was quickly submitted by Tyron Woodley in their welterweight title clash at UFC 228 in Dallas, Texas. That loss to “The Chosen One” was followed by a second-round knockout loss to Jorge Masvidal in London, a move to middleweight and win over Kelvin Gastelum at UFC 244, and a unanimous decision loss to Robert Whittaker last summer. He hasn’t fought since, withdrawing from scheduled clashes with Jack Hermansson and Marvin Vettori, leaving a 14-month gap between his bout with the former middleweight kingpin and Saturday’s meeting with Brunson.
None of those losses are particularly bad losses — he shouldn’t have been fighting Woodley in the first place and wasn’t well-rounded enough to contend with the welterweight champion on the canvas; Masvidal has always been a dangerous assignment; and Whittaker is the second-best middleweight on the planet — but at some point, you have to win a meaningful fight in order to justify your place in the hierarchy and not just lose to quality competition.
It’s the same problem Gastelum is facing right now, as he continues to be mired in an ugly slide that has produced one victory in six fights, with each of the five losses coming against opponents ranked in the Top 10. While he gets points for toughness and facing a daunting slate, if you’re an elite fighter and a title contender, you have to beat elite fighters and title contenders, not just have a couple moments in a losing effort, which is where Till finds himself at this moment, except he’s rarely spoken about in those terms.
The way the popular Scouser has been sold, the way he’s been packaged and pushed feel like they contribute a great deal to the way he’s viewed, even though they don’t really line up.
Through his first four UFC appearances, few people were overly bullish on Till’s prospects in the welterweight division; he was someone to watch that showed some promise, but not a lot of people watched his decision wins over Jessin Ayari and Bojan Velichovic thinking, “This guy is a perennial contender in the making.” But then the Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone fight happened and people lost their shit, inflating the value of a first-round knockout win over Cerrone when the battle-tested gunslinger came in on a two fight losing streak.
It was one of those instances where beating a big name in a main event carried far more weight than the victory should have in the moment, and it thrust Till into the thick of the chase in the welterweight division. He was positioned as the next big British star following the departure of Michael Bisping, and he was given the “Conor McGregor treatment” with a hometown headlining assignment opposite Stephen “Wonderboy” Thompson, who was coming off a unanimous decision win over Masvidal following his twin title fights with Woodley.
Till won the fight by unanimous decision, with scores of 48-47, 49-46, and 49-46.
It didn’t feel right in the moment and watching it back this morning, it feels more questionable today, as the two engaged in a low-output affair where only one round was decisive (the fifth, for Till) and each of the others come down to who landed the better smattering of shots. In each of those first four rounds, my answer at the time was Thompson and it remains that way today.
Now listen: I know that is a subject view and I hear those counters, but queue up the fight, turn off the volume, and watch it back, then tell me that Till didn’t get credit for forward motion and his general presence, even though Thompson often landed the most telling blows of each round.
In a fight where neither person is offering much volume, the weight of the best shots of each frame are amplified, and from my vantage point, Thompson was the one doling out the more meaningful, crucial blows throughout those first four rounds, while Till stalked and feinted and postured, throwing very little and landing even less.
Till missed weight for that contest by three-and-a-half pounds, the second time in four contests he’d failed to come in at or below the 171-pound limit, and yet despite the egregious weight miss and debated decision (22 of 25 media scores favoured Thompson), “The Gorilla” garnered a championship opportunity, where he was dispatched with relative ease.
Since then, there have been individual moments in each of his two losses with nothing particularly exciting in his lone victory sandwiched in between, and yet Till is still spoken about as someone right on the cusp of challenging for championship gold, rather than as a fighter in dire need of a big showing, which feels like the more apt descriptor.
Think about it: in the nearly two years since he beat Gastelum, that win has aged like a piece of fruit left out in the sun, as Gastelum has managed a 1-3 record since then, with his lone triumph coming over Ian Heinisch and none of the losses being particularly close. Till didn’t do anything overly impressive in that contest, and hasn’t had a dominant performance since his win over Cerrone nearly four years ago, and yet that’s the win that has him stationed inside the Top 10 in the middleweight division, getting discussed as someone that is one, maybe two wins away from challenging for the belt.
I get that he has to say he believes he’s one of the three best middleweights in the world, but the fact that so many others seem to echo those sentiments where there is very little evidence that supports that such a claim. While it’s certainly not as spurious as Kevin Lee declaring himself a Top 5 welterweight ahead of his fight with Daniel Rodriguez last weekend (which he lost), this is still one of those instances where it could be true, but I would really like to see some compelling evidence that supports this argument before I’m willing to get on board.
The fact that he’s paired off with Brunson this weekend is a tasty juxtaposition, as the 37-year-old veteran enters on a four-fight winning streak, having taken out emerging threats in each of his last two outings, yet is never mentioned as a potential title contender.
Part of that is because he’s already shared the Octagon with Adesanya and it didn’t go well, but it’s also because Brunson has always been positioned as a gatekeeper in the middleweight division, someone on the fringes of contention, and folks have a hard time shaking themselves free of those established ideas. It’s the inverse of where so many are at with Till, having been told time and again that he’s a threat, despite there being little compelling evidence suggesting that is true.
And here’s what makes all this even more interesting (at least to me) heading into this weekend: if Brunson is just a gatekeeper, does beating him do enough for Till to truly climb into contention?
It could happen simply because of the dearth of fresh names and overall parity in the middleweight division, but is beating someone few people view as a legitimate threat enough to earn carry him into the championship conversation or should he need to post more than a single victory in order to elevate his standing in the division?
And what if he can’t get by Brunson?
Will that be enough to finally force people to review the way they think about Till or will the fact that he’s been held out as a contender for so long continue to endure, leaving him still just a couple strong performances away from fighting for gold?
I think he’s desperately in need of a truly impressive effort and should still require another victory after that to merit title consideration, and I say that as someone that has long sung the praises of the Derek Brunson types.
Then again, I’ve never really been sold on Till as an undeniable contender to begin with, so maybe that’s a little bit of bias showing through.
Either way, the best thing the talented Scouser can do is march into the Octagon on Saturday and rip through Brunson in dominant fashion, finally putting up the kind of unquestionable, truly meaningful victory he’s long been missing.