Santiago Ponzinibbio would be “so happy” if he gets Darren Till in his next fight, because he believes it would be an easy night for himself.
Vicente Luque wants to fight Santiago Ponzinibbio in August at UFC Uruguay; Ponzinibbio, however, isn’t jumping up at the thought of that matchup.
Ponzinibbio had surgery less than a week ago for a bacterial infection in his blood. The No. 9 welterweight is recovering from that and has no timeline for his return. He said he expects to have an idea of when he can fight next in a few weeks.
While Ponzinibbio didn’t completely shut down the possibility of fighting Luque when asked about Luque’s recent call-out, he made it clear it wouldn’t be his first choice.
“My last three fights, two times I fought the No. 8 in the world, and both times I knocked out,” Ponzinibbio told Bloody Elbow. “I think I deserve a fight with a top-five guy, a higher ranking than me. But right now, I don’t know when I can come back. I don’t know who will be available when I am ready to come back. When I can come back to training and I’m in good shape, I’ll look at my options.”
One man he has more interest in fighting — and whose name has been found in the same sentence as his lately — is Darren Till, who is coming off a brutal knockout loss to Jorge Masvidal at UFC London in March. Top contender Rafael dos Anjos recently said he’d heard Ponzinibbio had turned down a fight with Till for the London card. As a result, dos Anjos claimed, the UFC did not want to give Ponzinibbio a big matchup as a sort of punishment.
But if you ask Ponzinibbio, that is false and there is nothing about Till that would make him turn down the fight. He simply wasn’t available for the March card, because he was dealing with a knee injury, Ponzinibbio said. He added he isn’t willing to fight at “70, 80 percent” because “I put in a lot of work for seven victories in a row.” Ponzinibbio said he was instead willing to fight Till in April or May.
“This is bullsh-t. The first guy that turned down the fight with Darren Till is himself, not me,” Ponzinibbio said. … “The UFC needed him for London, and they put another guy, they put (Jorge) Masvidal. [Till] was scared to fight me. He don’t like the fight with me. He knows if he fight with me, he would lose and have three losses in a row.”
Ponzinibbio claimed that Till actually turned down a fight with him at UFC Argentina last November — and after. The 32-year-old ended up fighting Neil Magny on that card, scoring a fourth-round TKO win.
“When I fought in Argentina, he said no, he can’t go to Argentina, it’s too far, blah blah blah,” Ponzinibbio said of Till. “After [my win over Magny], he said, ‘I’d like to fight Ponzinibbio,’ and my manager talked to the UFC, and [Till] turned down the fight. He said nothing about the fight. He don’t like the fight with me. He was scared.”
Ponzinibbio said he would be “so happy” if he gets Till next, because it’s an “easy fight” for him. He said Till is a “fake fighter,” not a “real fighter,” and that he would knock him out.