Darren Till is making no apologies for the way his fight with Yoel Romero went down at BKFC94 in Manchester on Saturday.
Their highly anticipated clash
ended up being a bit of a dull affair with a lot of clinching and standing on the outside. In the end, the judges controversially gave the five round fight to Till with 49-46 scores, despite Romero scoring a knockdown (that wasn’t counted) and splitting “The Gorilla” open under his right eye.“If I had got bored and listened to the crowd and lunged
in, I’d have got caught and dropped and potentially knocked out,” Till said during the post-fight press conference. “So analyzing through the fight where you’re going through the motions and watching and you know what he’s waiting for and what he’s doing, I couldn’t lunge in. So I had to play the chess match … and it just became that over the five rounds, just trying to pop each other.”
“It was just one of them fights. Over 18 years you have them fights. He had a terrific fight in the UFC against Luke [Rockhold], then he had a f–king boring fight against [Israel] Adesanya … Well, I wouldn’t say boring because if you understand the mechanisms of it, it was a great chess match. So it is what it is sometimes.”
“You know what, sometimes you have these fights where you’ve both gotta just do what you can do, like,” Till told talkSPORT. “Yoel’s a big, big strong guy, you’ve got to respect his power, his size, his posture. So we had a five round good fight, I think. The crowd loved it at times and I got the win. It was a close fight and I got the win and I’m happy.”
“One of the most feared men on earth, not a lot of people want to fight Yoel. He is a feared man. I couldn’t make it out [how he was fighting], so I had to be clever, cuz when you’re an experienced fighter you can’t just have your hands down and lunge in. You’re going to take it. I had to figure the s–t out and that’s what I did.”
During the post-fight press conference, Till noted that he had lots of options but was sticking with Bare Knuckle FC for now.
“The owner of Misfits wished me good luck before going out,” Till said. “The owner of MVP wished me good luck. Queensbury wished me good luck. I’m with Bare Knuckle for the time being, now. I’m with David [Feldman]. I’m with the gang here now … And I just want to see where it goes.”
“It’s f–king brutal. My fingers are hurting, my knuckles are hurting, my face is hurting. It’s just such a thrill. I can sit here and say I’ve done every combat sport on earth. I don’t think there’s any higher thrill or adrenaline. So for the time being, I’m firmly with Bare Knuckle.”
Till told talkSPORT that any discussion of a fight at the legendary Anfield Stadium was BKFC’s doing, but he wouldn’t say no to it.
“If they’re bringing it to my attention and they think they can do Anfield with me and Mike Perry or if they want to do Tommy [Fury], then that’s fine, I’m up for it now,” he said. “I’m going to go away, I’m going to cure my injuries, and I’m up for that fight now. I’ll sign and we’ll get it done, we’ll start the press tour, we’ll start the promos. I’m up for it.”
Asked how long it might take to heal the ghastly cut below his eye, Till laughed.
“I haven’t got a clue, I’ve never had a cut like this,” he said. “Not like this.”
