Darren Till says he will fight Yoel Romero with a torn ACL, and delay surgery again
Darren Till has said out loud what most fighters keep to themselves: he is walking around with a torn ACL, he has been since his fight with Luke Rockhold, and he intends to face Yoel Romero at BKFC 94 anyway. The knee operation waits until the money is made.
- Fight Hub
- 29 August 2026
Key takeaways
- Darren Till says he is still carrying a torn ACL, damaged after the Luke Rockhold fight, and will face Yoel Romero at BKFC 94 in Manchester on September 26.
- He is postponing surgery until he has finished earning through bare-knuckle and Misfits Boxing, and says he is still hoping to return to MMA afterwards.
- Romero is 49, an Olympic silver medallist wrestler and former UFC title challenger, and won his own bare-knuckle debut by stoppage.
Darren Till is fighting on a knee he has not repaired
It happened in a changing room
The injury has a mundane origin, which somehow makes it worse. “After my fight with Luke Rockhold, it actually popped out in the changing room,” Till said. He has been carrying it since, and he is not hiding it: “I’m still walking around with a torn ACL.”
His own assessment of what that means day to day is almost dismissive. “I can do everything, movements and stuff. But it is the reality of it.” That is a fighter describing a structurally unstable knee as a manageable inconvenience, four weeks out from a bare-knuckle main event.
Why he is not fixing it yet
The reason is money, and he says so plainly. The plan is to keep earning first and repair the knee after: he wants the operation done once he has made what there is to make, whether that comes through bare-knuckle, Misfits Boxing or anything else, and he is still hopeful about going back to MMA on the other side of it.
That is a career plan built backwards from an operating table. It also explains the pace of the last two years.
The road that got him here
Six defeats in seven ended the UFC chapter
Till was, briefly, one of the most marketable fighters in Europe: wins over Stephen Thompson and Kelvin Gastelum, a welterweight title shot, a Liverpool crowd that travelled. Then a run of six defeats in seven closed the UFC door.
What followed is the modern post-UFC circuit in one CV. He moved into boxing with Misfits, where he knocked out former UFC middleweight champion Luke Rockhold with a left hand in the third round and took the Bridgerweight title. He left Misfits, signed a multi-fight deal with BKFC in April, and knocked out Aaron Chalmers on debut at BKFC 90 in Birmingham on May 30.
Yoel Romero is not a soft landing
The opponent is the part that makes the knee interesting. Yoel Romero is 49 years old, an Olympic silver medallist in freestyle wrestling and a former UFC middleweight title challenger, and he began his own bare-knuckle career by knocking down Theo Doukas three times before the stoppage at BKFC 80.
The two never met in the UFC despite years of proximity. They meet on September 26 at the AO Arena in Manchester, at a catchweight of 190 pounds, on a card where BKFC middleweight champion David Mundell defends against Jack Cullen in the co-main.
I'm still walking around with a torn ACL. After my fight with Luke Rockhold, it actually popped out in the changing room.
What it says about the circuit Till is fighting on
The honesty is the story
Fighters compete injured constantly. What is unusual here is the announcement. Till is not leaking it to a reporter after the fact or explaining a loss in hindsight, he is stating it four weeks out, on the record, with a ticket to sell.
In a sanctioned MMA promotion, that kind of public declaration invites questions from a commission before it invites questions from an opponent. On the post-UFC circuit, it is content. That difference is the actual subject here, and it is worth naming rather than admiring.
The arithmetic of delaying
An ACL reconstruction typically costs a professional athlete the better part of a year. Till is 33. Every fight he takes before the operation is a fight taken at a discount on his own body, and every one after it comes at an age where the return is slower.
He has done the sum and decided the payday is worth more now than the knee is later. It is a rational choice inside an irrational market, and it is his to make. It is also the reason to watch how he moves on September 26, rather than how he talks in the build-up.
What to watch on the night
Two things. Whether Till plants on the lead leg to throw the left hand that finished Rockhold and Chalmers, or fights off the back foot to protect the knee. And whether Yoel Romero, at 49, still has the explosion to punish him for either choice.
Follow the card with the real numbers
Darren Till’s full record, Yoel Romero’s UFC run and his bare-knuckle results, plus the rest of the BKFC 94 lineup, are in the FightHub app. Download it to follow the Manchester card fight by fight.
