Michael Bisping says that Darren Till dealt with a big injury before he shared the Octagon with Derek Brunson.
Till and Brunson collided in the main event of UFC Vegas 36. The action was held inside the UFC Apex in Las Vegas, Nevada. Brunson ended up scoring the third-round submission victory. Brunson is now riding a five-fight winning streak, while Till has gone 1-4 in his last five outings.
During an edition of BT Sport’s UFC Fight Week, Bisping revealed that Till suffered a torn ACL prior to the showdown with Brunson (h/t BJPenn.com).
“I went backstage to see Darren after the fight, he was very disappointed of course, but he was a man and holding it together. He was frustrated and understandably so. I spent about 30 minutes with him and Colin Heron, just talking to him and giving him some advice. Perhaps I’m breaking guy code here but there was an injury coming into that fight, he tore his ACL about 10 weeks ago and he never mentioned it.
“It’s an excuse, it’s a reason, whatever you want to call it, he never mentioned it and I’m sure Derek had problems as well. Certainly with that kind of injury, and he said he was having all kinds of medical treatment leading up to the fight. Of course, with that injury, it would’ve hampered his performance but still, you can’t take away from Derek Brunson on that night, Darren chose to step in.”
Bisping’s hunch about Brunson having pre-fight issues was correct. During the post-fight press conference, Brunson revealed he went into the bout with a rib injury (via Sherdog).
“I had a rib injury. I thought I broke my ribs. I got kicked in the ribs really hard by someone’s toe. This guy was about 240 [pounds]. It was kind of like a bad thing sparring with someone so heavy when I’m getting my body down to my fight weight and I’m getting ready to compete.
“But yeah, I thought I broke my ribs. The last three weeks to the camp, I couldn’t spar. I had to do conditioning, hit pads, I had to take a week off. So I only had two weeks to prepare. It was a little tough but that’s a part of the fight game.”
Time will tell what’s next for Till but he’ll have to go back to the drawing board. He recently posted images of Michael Bisping and Charles Oliveira, two fighters who overcame setbacks to become UFC champions.
