The UFC is coming to Liverpool and Darren Till will be fighting
- Published
The fans called, and the UFC answered
The world-famous UFC octagon is heading to Merseyside on Sunday 27 May.
The date was rumoured to have been selected for an event in Dublin, Ireland, but no event had been officially confirmed. Now, the UFC has announced that on that date they will bring a show to Liverpool for the first time.
UFC Liverpool was announced at the ceremonial weigh-in event for UFC London at The O2 Arena on Friday 16 March, with confirmation that Liverpool’s rising UFC star Darren Till will feature in the main event - though his opponent is yet to be confirmed.
The show will take place at the 11,000-capacity Echo Arena, a venue that is no stranger to MMA events, with UK promotion Cage Warriors hosting a number of shows there over the last couple of years. Till says the Echo Arena is just the start of his plan to put Liverpool on the UFC map.
Darren Till: My name will go down in history in Liverpool
"At the end of the day, it's all eyes on me," Till told BBC Three. "Not eyes on my opponents or on the under-card. It's eyes on me, and I've brought it to Liverpool. Two-hundred years from now, they are going to speak Darren Till's name."
The city was well represented in the UFC back in the early 2000, with the likes of Paul Sass and Terry Etim scoring impressive victories inside the octagon.
But now, there's a new generation of Liverpudlian MMA stars on the rise, led by Darren Till, who is making big waves in the UFC’s super-competitive welterweight division.
The 25-year-old, is undefeated with a record of 16 wins and one draw, and in his most recent outing back in October he finished UFC legend Donald ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone by TKO inside a round at UFC Fight Night in Gdansk, Poland.
The Echo Arena, Liverpool
Till is flying the flag for Liverpool in the UFC, but he may soon be joined by a crop of top-drawer prospects who have all earned world titles with Cage Warriors.
Cage Warriors women’s flyweight champion ’Meatball’ Molly McCann is a proud Evertonian with a thrilling, come-forward fighting style, while their lightweight champ Chris Fishgold is currently looking to drop a weight class and advance his career as a featherweight after defending the lightweight title three consecutive times.
The Cage Warriors middleweight champion, Lee ‘The Butcher’ Chadwick, is also from the city, as is former featherweight champion Paddy ‘The Baddy’ Pimblett, who is looking to kick off a new chapter of his promising career at lightweight.
If the UFC added some - or all - of Liverpool’s Cage Warriors stars to an Echo Arena card, with Till topping the bill, the 11,500 seats would almost certainly sell out in record time.
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And with former UFC middleweight champion Michael Bisping saying he’d love to bring the curtain down on his career with one more fight in England, the event could present the perfect opportunity for ‘The Count’ to bow out on home soil, too.
The fight card may not be decided yet, but one thing is guaranteed - whoever ends up on the card at the Echo Arena will be set to fight in front of one of the most passionate sporting fanbases anywhere in the world.
'You’ll Never Walk Alone' being sung at a UFC event? Don’t rule it out.
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