Darren Till couldn't believe what he saw in his mixed martial arts return fight on Saturday.
A one-time UFC title challenger, Till was competing for the first time since December 2022, when he made his boxing debut in a four-round exhibition bout against Mohamed Moutier at Social Knockout 3. Till ultimately emerged victorious, but that wasn't the biggest story. Rather, a bizarre scene unfolded when Moutier complained he'd been hit in the back of the head midway through the second round, and the ring descended into a chaotic brawl.
“You're an MMA fighter, you're a fighter, these things happen,” Till said Monday. MMA Hour“Twenty minutes on the floor? Paramedics in there? I was watching in disbelief. I was like, 'This is what happens in my comeback fight.' I couldn't believe it. I think he was just looking for an escape. He sensed my power, he knew my range. I was going to knock him out in that round. That's what I thought in my head. And then, yeah, I thought I was going to win it, and then hell broke loose.”
Till, 31, admitted he accidentally hit Mutti in the back of the head during the fight but was left embarrassed by what happened afterwards.
After rolling around in agony in the center of the ring, Muti got to his feet and charged violently at Till. The Liverpudlian kept Muti at bay with swinging left hands, but things quickly escalated from there, as both teams charged the ring and began a violent brawl. At one point, Muti even managed to send Till to the canvas with a single-leg takedown. The bout ultimately ended in a TKO in the second round, with Till winning.
“I was just chilling out, watching him roll around on the floor, and I thought to myself, this guy's not a fighter, he's just a coward,” Till recalled. “Then he came up to me and said, 'I wanted to fight, but the referee wouldn't let me.' I said, 'Dude, hang in there.'”
“I said, 'I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear any excuses. Just keep running. I'll see you later.' And he started yelling this and that. I said, 'Dude, I think you're a coward.' And I guess he thought people would stop him. He started running towards me. When he started running towards me, I was back to being myself when I was striking.”
Till said event organizers and local Dubai police called Muti a “disgrace” for the fiasco. Till said someone even kicked him in the frenzy and he wasn't happy about it, but at the end of the day, the all that matters is that he escaped unharmed.
Till playfully accepted the bout as a way to get back on the boxing scene and get active again after his July 20 bout with Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. fell through, and he chose to view the much-talked-about debut through the lens that all press in the combat sports world is positive press.
“The guy's probably done us a favour, if you look at the internet,” Till said. “The whole world's talking about it, so that's a good thing. It's not a bad thing. Darren Till's always got some issues.”
“But bad things happen. I've been in fights my whole life. I've been in turmoil my whole life. So this is just another day at the office. [boxing] If I win… then now comes the big fight that I've been aiming for. So overall, it's been a bit of a busy week, a last-minute battle, but everything's going well.”
Till continues to name Mike Perry and Jake Paul among those big fight possibilities, and also named fellow UFC veterans Nate Diaz and Jorge Masvidal as possible opponents for his next bout at The Sweet Science.
Notably, Diaz and Masvidal also met in a boxing match on Saturday, with Diaz winning by 10-round majority decision in Masvidal's first boxing bout since 2005.
Of course, Till has fought Masvidal before, suffering a knockout loss to “Gamebred” at UFC in 2019.
But no matter where he goes from here, there's one person Till will definitely not face in his next boxing adventure: “The Coward” Muti himself.
“There was a decisive winner. He was on the floor rolling around for 20 minutes,” Till said when asked about the rematch. “He got his five minutes of fame. He just wanted to get out of there fast. He was never going to win the fight. He was never going to do anything. He knows that. He knew it before the fight.”
