Darren Till is moving up to middleweight.
According to a report from ESPN’s Brett Okamoto, the former welterweight title challenger will make his middleweight debut opposite a fellow former welterweight in Kelvin Gastelum at UFC 244. The card goes down on November 2 inside New York City’s hallowed Madison Square Garden.
Breaking: Darren Till is moving up. Till vs. Kelvin Gastelum at middleweight is a done deal for UFC 244 on Nov. 2 in NYC, per sources. What a fight. pic.twitter.com/0otT8giprt
— Brett Okamoto (@bokamotoESPN) August 26, 2019
“Breaking: Darren Till is moving up. Till vs. Kelvin Gastelum at middleweight is a done deal for UFC 244 on Nov. 2 in NYC, per sources. What a fight.” – Brett Okamoto on Twitter.
Darren Till was seemingly still deliberating a move to middleweight as recently as last week, but evidently, he’s made his decision.
“I haven’t thought about it much,” Till said recently on MMA Fighting’s Eurobash podcast. “Let’s do middle, let’s do welter—let’s do every f*cking weight because at the end of the day I’m really not scared of any man.
“It would be more like relaxation for my head because I wouldn’t have to worry about the weight; the weight cut won’t be as big because there would be a few less kilos to cut, which I think would be a big weight off my mind. Nothing is set in stone yet, so we’ll see where the end of this year leads me,” Till added.
Darren Till will enter this fight having lost his last two bouts at welterweight, first tapping out to Tyron Woodley in his first bid at UFC gold in 2018, then succumbing to a violent knockout courtesy of Jorge Masvidal earlier this year. Prior to these losses, he had never been defeated in MMA.
Kelvin Gastelum, on the other hand, will be looking to rebound from a competitive decision loss to Israel Adesanya in a 2019 Fight of the Year contender. This loss marked a failed bid to capture the UFC interim middleweight title. Prior to that loss, he was riding high on wins over Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza and Michael Bisping.
This article first appeared on BJPENN.COM on 8/26/2019.