Esther Lin, MMA Fighting
After training and talking with the lineal heavyweight champ, Darren Till is giving pretty good odds that Fury actually ends up in the cage.
There’s no UFC this week, and there’s no UFC next week. So what you get in the meantime is boxing highlights, and MMA related boxing news! We’ve already beat that Mayweather MMA news horse silly, so let’s switch gears and touch on Tyson Fury MMA rumors.
Leading up to his relatively short notice appearance at WWE Crown Jewel in Saudi Arabia, Fury spoke to a reporter and said he planned on crossing over to fight in mixed martial arts. Shortly after, he turned up in a 15 minute video training with UFC middleweight Darren Till.
What’s it all mean? We have no idea. Fury’s got a massive boxing superfight up next with his rematch against Deontay Wilder in February (watch Wilder KO Luis Ortiz here). But after that, could Fury really try his hand at MMA? He’s made it clear that big challenges are what keep him motivated, and there’s no bigger challenge than successfully winning in the Octagon.
BT Sport had a nice 20 minute chat with Darren Till and when the discussion turned to Fury, here’s what the Liverpool fighter had to say about their training session.
”I thought to myself, he’s gonna come and learn a few techniques and that’s it,” Till said. “He said to me when we were starting, ‘I’ve come to train hard.’ I was like ‘Okay then.’ He’s come to train, he’s gonna get some training. You’ve seen the video. So I said ‘Tyson, I’m gonna teach you what I think you need to know about MMA. You’re considering this. I’ll teach you what I think you need.’
”So we started off with some warmups Coach Mike the wrestler always teaches us. I got him involved in some sprawls and shadowboxing and we went into sparring pads. We done a hard hour, I swear, a hard hour. And after he was chatting with me about the mental side of things, what he went through and stuff like that. I swear, that guy’s got a rock solid mentality. Unbelievable mentality. I thought mine was strong. The stuff that came out of his mouth was next level.”
As for Fury making the jump to MMA?
”I think it’s about 70/30. 70 yes, 30 no,” Till said. “You gotta remember boxing to MMA is very different as well. He’s making a lot of money, he’s a top three heavyweight. I’d love to see it for the entertainment factor. It’s all about the entertainment and whoever he gets – maybe Stipe wants to fight him and probably thinks he can box him. I don’t think so. But I hope so. But maybe I’d be in on a little percentage of that as Coach Till. We’re the same management, we’re both MTK so no matter what I’m just supporting him, I’m supporting my team.”
As for Till, his dream fight would obviously be middleweight champ Israel Adesanya, but he said it looked like Robert Whittaker was most likely next. After narrowly beating Kelvin Gastelum, things aren’t getting any easier for the newest 185 pound contender. And that’s just how Till seems to like it.