Darren Till on ‘stale’ UFC 248 main event, ‘unbelievable’ co-main: ‘Give them five million each’

Darren Till wasn’t bowled over by Israel Adesanya and Yoel Romero’s meeting at the weekend, but was nearly left speechless by the epic encounter between Weili Zhang and Joanna Jedrzejczyk in the co-main event.

The Liverpudlian middleweight had a keen eye on the main event title bout having got off to great start in the division with a win over Kelvin Gastelum last year. However, he admitted that what transpired between Adesanya and Romero was not what most people were expecting.

“I just think it was stale,” Till told MMA Fighting’s Eurobash podcast.

“I don’t think people expected it. People could say my last fight was stale, which it was, but I didn’t big it up or nothing - I sort of just went in there and got the win technically and then went home all happy with my new division, middleweight. But that fight was bigged up. Obviously, everyone has been on about how scary Yoel is. For the past few months, I’ve been making jokes about being scared of Yoel because he’s an animal and Izzy has been in these technical wars with Gastelum.”

Till was confused by the headline duo’s tactics but insisted that they should be given a pass for one fight.

“Yoel looked dead heavy, he didn’t look as explosive. Izzy was sort of running away and stuff like that, but can always give them [a break] for one fight, you give them a bypass. That’s it really, there’s not a lot to comment on because there wasn’t a lot happening.”

Although he wasn’t too impressed with the main event, Till could barely find words to describe how enthralled he was by the title meeting between Zhang and Jedrzejczyk:

“The fight before it, Joanna and Weili Zhang, what a fight! Oh my god, I have never seen a fight like that before in my life,” Till said. “It was f*ckin’ unbelievable, mate. I don’t even know what to say, it was unbelievable! Oh my god...I swear...give them two girls five million dollars each because they deserve it.”

While he insisted that both fighters should be considered champions after their back-and-forth battle, the Kaobon fighter underlined that he thought the Polish former champion did enough to secure the win.

“I thought Joanna just grabbed that...I really did. Listen, it’s one of those things where whoever wins, just wins and there are no hard feelings...well there may be hard feelings there for Joanna because she could be the champion, but she sort of is a champion after a fight like that. There’s no other thing to do now but rebook the rematch - what a f*ckin’ fight!”

“Five years time, it’s getting inducted into the Hall of Fame, no questions asked,” he added.

Check out Darren Till’s return to Eurobash. It begins at 14:00.