Darren Till lands main event clash with Donald Cerrone at UFC Gdansk

British welterweight firebrand Darren Till is being thrust into the spotlight with a main event bout against a bona-fide octagon legend.

Liverpool’s Till will complete a six-week turnaround to take on former UFC championship challenger and fan favourite Donald ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone in the main event of UFC Fight Night in Gdansk, Poland on October 21. Both fighters have spoken openly about the contest over the past 24 hours, but the fight was only confirmed by UFC officials today.

Cerrone is in Edmonton this week for UFC 215 and chatted to reporters about the upcoming bout, admitting he just wanted to get another fight in as soon as possible in order to still be able to fight on the December 30 card in Las Vegas.

And when he was unable to get himself onto the UFC 216 card in Vegas he offered, to the UFC’s surprise, to fight over in Poland. A few phone calls and two signed bout agreements later, he’s confirmed as the main event star against rising prospect Till, a fighter Cerrone admitted he’d never actually heard of prior to their agreement to fight in Poland.

While Cerrone is a world-renowned elite-level operator, Till is a young gun looking to gatecrash the UFC’s welterweight rankings. He’s undefeated, has an exciting, crowd-pleasing fighting style and possesses the sort of easy-going confidence that has helped carry other fighters right to the top of the sport.

Till is fresh from an entertaining three-round decision victory over Bojan Velickovic at UFC Fight Night in Rotterdam. His UFC career to date has featured a quartet of entertaining bouts, with wins over Wendell Oliveira, Jessin Ayari and Velickovic, plus a remarkable scrap with former Cage Warriors champion Nicolas Dalby, where Till fought with a dislocated shoulder for the final round of his bout as the pair fought to an honourable draw in Dublin.

Following his win over Velickovic, Till called for a top-drawer opponent, saying he’s the best striker in the welterweight division. He suggested a bout with Argentina’s Santiago Ponzinibbio, but he’s landed an even bigger fish in Cerrone and the added spotlight of a five-round main event to showcase his skills.

The fighting styles of both men augur well for an entertaining scrap to round off the night in Gdansk – a fight card that features a host of European talent, including the debut of Gdansk’s own Cage Warriors middleweight champion Oskar Piechota, former strawweight title challenger Karolina Kowalkiewicz and ‘The Russian Hammer’ Artem Lobov.

UFC Fight Night: Cerrone vs Till takes place on Saturday night, October 21 in Gdansk, Poland. The event will be shown live on UFC Fight Pass worldwide and on BT Sport in the UK.