Middleweight contender Darren Till has explained why a fight with 185lb king Israel Adesanya will be easier than the one he has just had with Robert Whittaker in the UFC Fight Island 3 main event.
The Englishman dropped to a decision defeat against Whittaker in a highly competitive and cagey fight. It was just Till’s second fight at middleweight after previously beating Kelvin Gastelum in his divisional debut.
Whittaker was making his first Octagon appearance since losing the title to Adesanya back at UFC 243 in October 2019. The former champ recovered from a difficult first round to win the fight on all three judges scorecards.
Adesanya immediately took to social media post-fight to express his belief he will still fight Till down the line despite ‘The Gorilla’ suffering a setback on Yas Island, he wrote.
“I still wanna fight Till one day. His striking is beautiful. Stay up Darren!”
I still wanna fight Till one day.
His striking is beautiful.
Stay up Darren!— Israel Adesanya (@stylebender) July 26, 2020
Speaking to media at the UFC Fight Island 3 post-fight press conference Till expressed his belief that an eventual fight against Adesanya will be easier than fighting Whittaker because ‘The Last Stylbender’ is a pure striker.“Haha, another good friend.” Till said about Adesanya’s post-fight comments. “I’m going to have to layoff direct messaging him for a while. All I do is scream in the videos to him and the Instagram messages. But, I’ve got a lot of respect for this lad. I think he’s a great fighter. You know what, this is no disrespect to him, but I think he’s probably an easier fight for me than Rob because we both.. we’d probably have a great striking battle. Rob’s a bit different because he mixes it up. Israel is a great MMA fighter but he’s a pure striker. I think we’d have a great fight. Rob mixed it up a little bit and he’s wild. He’s wilder than me. He will lunge with his head and time off it. He caught me with some cracking shots and I was just eating them for breakfast.” (Transcribed by BJPENN.com)
Do you think Darren Till could beat Israel Adesanya?