Darren Till told UFC announcer Bruce Buffer that he had suffered an injury to his ACL during his loss to Dricus Du Plessis on Saturday night in Las Vegas.
The Liverpool native competed on the main card of UFC 282, alongside his fellow scouser Paddy Pimblett who managed to defeat Jared Gordon in the co-main event. But his luck wasn't as good, as he struggled to get going before having a back-and-forth battle with the South African which ended in third round submission.
Till took a brutal beating in the first round as Du Plessis attempted to finish the fight with a seemingly non-stop onslaught of punches. But it appeared that allowing his rival to punch himself out worked to Till's advantage as he managed to take over the fight in the second.
However, at one point in the middle of the fight, the Brit appeared to wince in pain, and it would later be announced on the broadcast that he had claimed to have pulled his ACL. He held on and looked good at times in the third, but ended up back on the ground and submitted quickly to a rear-naked-choke.
Video has since emerged of Till on his way back to the dressing rooms after the fight telling Buffer about the injury. He can be seen heading towards the backstage area before turning around and having a brief conversation which is hard to hear due to the noise of the arena.
Parts of the conversation can be picked up, including a piece where Buffer tells him "they asked me on broadcast if you hurt your knee or not." Till responds that he "tore his ACL," and when it's asked if that should be made public he tells the announcer "let them know."
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Till's defeat was his third in a row, and his fifth in his last six fights. He has been stopped in four of those, and now will have to head back to the drawing board and re-evaluate where he's at in his career having lost all but one of his efforts at middleweight as a former welterweight title contender.
The Brit always struggled to get down to the limit at welterweight, and decided after his loss to Jorge Masvidal in March of 2019 to make the move up to middleweight. He won his first fight at 185lb, beating Kelvin Gastelum, but has struggled since, losing to Robert Whittaker, Derek Brunson and now Du Plessis.
It remains to be seen what is next for Till, who many viewed as being in a crossroads fight for his career. Should he have suffered another ACL injury, similar to the one he did in 2021 that forced him out for over a year, he could be facing a lengthy road to recovery.
