Darren Till Refutes Weight Cut for UFC Liverpool Was As Bad as Video Made It Look
Darren Till still plans on fighting at welterweight and he’s firing back after a video of his previous weight cut for the UFC card in Liverpool showed him in bad shape trying to get down to 171 pounds.
While Till went onto defeat Stephen “Wonderboy” Thompson the next day, a video was later released documenting his weight cut that showed the British welterweight suffering through a treadmill run that ended with him reportedly not being able to see.
The video eventually cut off due to the severity of the physical problems facing Till and then the video was removed from YouTube after the responses were definitely not in his favor for a return to the welterweight division.
Now Till is responding to that video by saying that it didn’t show the true depth of his weight cut where he was up all night dealing with a personal problem as well as trying to get down to the welterweight limit for his fight.
“I was cutting weight, stopped running and sort of felt a bit dizzy because I was up early, and I didn’t have any food all night or water and I was still trying to cut weight. So it wasn’t that I couldn’t see or I was in a bad way, I just felt dizzy,” Till told ESPN. “You know anytime you try and stand up too quick? That’s sort of how I felt.
“I didn’t lose sight. I was just feeling dizzy. It was five o’clock in the morning and I was up all night and I’d been back and forth to the hospital and then in the sauna. I just felt dizzy and I said to my coach, ‘give me a minute’, and he said, ‘I don’t think you can carry on running, let’s just give you a little rest’, and that was it. Obviously, the video makes it look a little bit worse but it wasn’t in any way bad.”
Till never made the welterweight limit but instead came in over weight for his fight with Thompson. Regardless of that brutal weight cut and failing to make weight for the second time in his UFC career, Till scoffs at the idea that he’ll be fighting anywhere other than welterweight for his next fight.
“I can still make welterweight, that’s for certain,” Till said. “I want to move on from the video and the weight cut because a lot of people don’t make weight. In the end I was getting pissed off, I just felt like saying, ‘I’m not the first and I certainly won’t be the last’. I missed weight, I’m sorry, but I did have other things going on.
“Yeah, it’s put a little dampener on my win, but it doesn’t change the fact that I beat the No. 1 in the world. If anything, I was worse off in the fight. I was at 60-percent because I cut weight wrong that night. I was dehydrated, I was weak, so I wasn’t my full self, but I just feel like a bit too much of a big deal has been made out of it.”
Till says he has been invited to work at the UFC Performance Institute, which has an in house nutritionist and other medical professionals who could help him make weight in a safer manner.
Till takes responsibility for failing to make weight in Liverpool while also admitting he’s never scrutinized his nutrition the way he probably should while fighting at this level. That will all change now with Till committed to fighting at welterweight where he is likely only a win or two away from a title shot.
