We’re hours away from Mike Perry’s fight with Santiago Ponzinibbio. It’s a classic fight that we’ve seen time and time again. With all of his victories being finishes, the UFC is banking on Perry to go into this fight at UFC Winnipeg and increase his star power. If he wins, not only doesn’t it increase the value of the Platinum product, but opens up more options as he breaks into the welterweight rankings. One of those being a potential showdown with another surging contender, that was hyped back in Poland: Darren Till.

“As I said before, I don’t really care about rankings, and if [Mike] Perry wins — even if Santiago [Ponzinibbio] wins — I think they’re both good match-ups for me. If Perry wins, it’s a great showdown for the Liverpool event because I know he’s definitely game to come and fight me in my hometown, and I know he’s going to come in talking some sh-t and I’m going to be talking sh-t. I think it would make for an explosive buildup to a fight and I know that for a fact. It’s going to make for a good fight, so I’m pulling for Perry to win this weekend. If you asked me who’s going to win, I’d probably say Santiago is going to pull the win off, but I would like Perry to win. People might think I’ve gone past him, but I think that fight is up in the air now. I’ll take any fight.”

“Let’s get one thing straight, [Kamaru] Usman thinks that the whole division is scared of him. He thinks that no one wants to fight him and apparently he’s the hardest guy in the welterweight division, so if Usman thinks he’s the guy to beat me, I’m game for that fight as well. I’ll prove him wrong. I’ll knock him out as well. Let’s just hope that he beats Emil Meek and Perry beats Santiago so that will leave those two fights at play for me. There are a lot of options, so it’s going to exciting to see what happens next year and to see what route my career goes down. Everyone wants to fight Darren Till now. There must be something in the air because everyone is calling me out now.” — Darren Till speaking to MMA Fighting. 

The UFC clearly knows we haven’t forgot about the confrontation between Mike Perry and Darren Till back at UFC Gdansk, hence their tweet crowdsourcing a reaction on Twitter. Don’t think that means that Till has forgotten about Kamaru Usman. Dispatching of a name like Donald ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone gives a fighter options, which Till has from the top to the bottom at welterweight. Regardless of how all this plays out, welterweight has more intriguing contenders than it has in years, one of them is bound to break out.

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 12/16/2017.