Darren Till was in talks to face Jake Paul until he ultimately decided to face PFL welterweight Cedric Doumbe in his return to boxing, which left the former UFC title challenger out in the cold.
That said, Till has been keeping plenty busy lately with his new career in bare-knuckle fighting with two fights and two wins under the BKFC banner thus far. Till initially signed a three-fight deal with the promotion, but BKFC president David Feldman promises they have longterm plans for the British slugger
that hopefully goes far beyond one more bout.
“We have options,” Feldman told MMA Fighing. “I get along very, very well with him. I get along very, very well with his management, but there is a fight or two outside of BKFC that he would like that would be a really, really big payday for him. That’s why we did it as an option. But we do have options on his next few fights. There is going to be a longer relationship with BKFC and Darren Till.”
After allowing Mike Perry to book his own boxing match with Paul, which obviously delayed his eventual return to BKFC, Feldman admits that he supports his fighters receiving great opportunities outside of the organization but each is handled on a case by case basis.
Feldman sounded supportive if Till had landed that Paul fight in December but he also knows that BKFC plans always have to come first.
“It comes to do we have something for Darren Till that makes sense?” Feldman said. “Is the timing going to be right? If we have to lay him off for eight, nine months, it’s only fair to let him go out and make a payday because the momentum’s going to be killed anyway if we don’t have a fight for him. But if we have a fight that I think we’re going to have in the next two weeks to announce, then obviously he’s fighting for BKFC. If we don’t then there is an option for him to possibly to fight a Jake Paul or something like that.
“I think that Darren Till can hang in there with Jake Paul, has a very good chance of beating him as well so I think it could raise his profile a lot and he has a chance to make a lot of money. But at the same time, we’re not going to cut our nose off to spite our face here at at BKFC. If we have something that works for him, he’s going to do that first.”
While nothing is booked just yet, Feldman teased the possibility of going to a soccer stadium in Liverpool for Till’s next fight while also admitting he could come back to the United States for a future outing in the BKFC ring.
But Feldman promises the promotion has some big ideas for Till’s next opponent, and with BKFC 100 and the next KnuckleMania card fast approaching in 2027, it’s hard to believe their latest superstar won’t be involved.
“We’re going to have some big names for Darren Till in the mix very, very shortly,” Feldman said. “One of them will be part of our announcement we’re going to make in the next couple weeks.”
