SBG Coach John Kavanagh spoke to www.themaclife.com (of course) to confirm that the UFC offered Gunnar Nelson a fight against Darren Till for UFC London and that they have accepted the offer and that the ball was now in Darren Till’s court.
So @ufc have offered @GunniNelson v @darrentill2 main event #UFCLondon we've agreed so hoping to hear confirmation soon 🤜how do you guys like the match up? I'm reminded of the Thatch fight, big strong striker but I think Till is tougher challenge. One way to find out… pic.twitter.com/b7U81FpzBf
— Coach Kavanagh (@John_Kavanagh) January 24, 2018
They already have. 100% completely Tills choice at this stage. Main card a UFC event in your home country with 7 weeks notice. Sounds good eh? https://t.co/BVKviZ4XBe
— Coach Kavanagh (@John_Kavanagh) January 25, 2018
As Coach Kavanagh mentioned, there was some back and forth between Darren Till and Gunnar Nelson earlier on twitter and a match up between these two European fighters would make perfect sense for UFC London, though of course it might have made more sense if they were both seperately fighting non-Europeans, so that the crowd could get behind both of them rather than have to choose sides now.
Here are the back and forth tweets between Darren and Gunnar.
Darren Till of course is the bigger target here since he remains undefeated 16-0-1 with only a draw on his record and last fight resulting in a very impressive TKO win over Donald Cowboy Cerrone on Oct 21st 2017 in Gdansk,Poland.
Gunnar Nelson on the other hand has had 3 losses in the last three years after initially going 13-0 til 2014. His last fight was a loss to the surging Santiago Ponzinibbio taking his record to 16-3-1.
A fight between Darren and Gunnar would of course be very interesting in the traditional stand up vs ground way so let’s see if Darren says yes, since he’s the one who initially called out Gunnar…we’re up to watching.
Ben Askren claims UFC said they would sign him … until he left Bellator MMA.