Darren Till made a splash in the middleweight division when he enjoyed a successful divisional debut against Kelvin Gastelum earlier this month.
The pair collided in the co-main event of UFC 244 with Till coming out on top via unanimous decision after a tactical and controlled performance.
As a result, he is now in the top five of the middleweight rankings with a number of fighters calling him out such as former champion Robert Whittaker and Jared Cannonier.
Naturally, the Liverpool native would like to have a crack at current champion Israel Adesanya first. However, if that doesn’t pan out, Till feels he is in a position and has the name value to pick whoever he wants to fight next.
“I’ll pick. I’ll see who I want to fight,” Till said in a recent interview with BT Sport. “Because they’re all calling me out for a reason. So obviously I’m holding all the chips. Yoel is the only one not calling me out. Yes! I might have a pint tonight to call him out.”
One of the recurring themes of Till’s middleweight career so far has been talking about how Romero is a beast who he did not want to face at all.
He would eventually call “The Soldier of God” out soon after before backtracking in comedic fashion.
Me when romero replies pic.twitter.com/EmQQqreqW5
— D (@darrentill2) November 14, 2019
But make no mistake about it — all of that is just fun and games. In reality, Till will fight anybody, Romero included.
“I don’t take myself too seriously,” he added. “If Colin [Heron] was still here right now, he’d probably be shouting at me but if you turned a corner and said ‘Darren’s scared to fight Yoel’ — I think you’d pretty much know the response. Me coming from the gym I come from and the master I’ve been taught under. He’s like a Shaolin monk. Colin goes to the gym in the morning and he stays in the gym at night.
“… But I’m not scared of Yoel. It’s just, don’t take life too seriously. I understand, I realize and I recognize what Yoel is as a fighter, as a human. He walks in here, he’s a specimen. It’s just jokes, mate. People shouldn’t take it too seriously. I’ve seen actually a few people take it seriously and I’m like ‘come on, mate. Have a day off from yourself.’ Whether you think Yoel would beast me around or not is totally irrelevant. This is all down to the fact that me saying I was scared of Yoel. And then people are like ‘wow, he’s actually said that! After giving a great interview, he’s just said that. And two, three, four days later, he calls him out and then he regrets calling him out. And then he posts the gorilla running away.’ It’s all fun and games, mate, really.”
Given the rankings, there is a likelihood that Till will end up facing Romero at some point in the future. And should that happen, the jokes will all come to an end then.