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“All my life I’ve had this crazy confidence that I’m just this superhuman being inside that Octagon and in life and it got knocked a bit”.
It’s been a rough couple of years for Darren Till.
The Liverpudlian lost out on the biggest fight of his career in 2018, losing to then-champ Tyron Woodley at UFC 228 and then suffered a crushing knockout loss to Jorge Masvidal the following year at UFC Fight Night London.
Till, who was formerly undefeated, was stopped in the second round in both fights and admits that the knockout loss to Masvidal hurt the most and seriously knocked his confidence.
“It hurt a lot for a while. A lot of guys say, ‘I wasn’t bothered,’ but it hurt,” Till said in a recent interview with BT Sport (h/t Jed Meshew of MMA Fighting). “Just because I just know what could have been after that fight. It could have been title, back in there, a lot of stuff. I even said to coach Colin, ‘Win or lose this fight, Colin, I wanna be straight back in and fight again,’ but it never quite went that way. I just like sort of fell off the wagon.”
“All my life I’ve had this crazy confidence that I’m just this superhuman being inside that Octagon and in life and it got knocked a bit,” he continued. “I’m not ashamed to say that. I want to get that back. It’s there. I’m still that confident guy that if you put me in front of everyone, I know I can beat them. I know there’s something in me that can beat everyone. I’ve got that technique and I’ve got that will. It got lost a bit after the fight, so I just had to find it. That’s why maybe it’s took a little bit longer to come back.”
Till will look to spring back into the winners column when he makes his UFC middleweight debut against top contender Kelvin Gastelum at UFC 244. The highly anticipated PPV, which features a headlining welterweight bout between Jorge Masvidal and Nate Diaz, takes place later this year, Nov. 2 at Madison Square Garden, New York.