Darren Till Pushes Back on Fans Questioning Israel
Darren Till publicly defended Israel Adesanya’s career after Nassourdine Imavov stopped the former middleweight champion in Riyadh on February 1, 2025.
Related video: The embedded clip is MMA Fighting’s post-event discussion of Imavov’s knockout and the Saudi Arabia card. It provides fight-night context; it is not footage of Till’s social-media post.
In a long social-media post, Till said he and Adesanya were not friends and that he was not necessarily the former champion’s biggest fan outside the cage. He argued that those personal feelings did not diminish Adesanya’s achievements. Till pointed to Adesanya’s title run and wins over Paulo Costa and Robert Whittaker, calling him one of the sport’s greatest middleweights. MMA Fighting reported Till’s comments and noted he said even five more losses would not change his view of Adesanya’s standing.
The result itself was clear: Imavov won by second-round knockout at 0:30. Adesanya had looked sharp in the opening round, which all three judges scored for him, before Imavov landed the sequence that ended the fight. The official scorecard and result confirm the finish.
Adesanya later returned to the cage but lost again, this time by second-round TKO to Joe Pyfer on March 28, 2026. That result makes Till’s 2025 comments a snapshot of the conversation immediately after Imavov’s upset, rather than a prediction of what would happen next. His central point was about judging a career by its body of work, not rewriting the record after one difficult night.
The title history helps explain why Till resisted reducing Adesanya’s standing to a short losing streak. Adesanya became undisputed champion in 2019 and held the belt through five official defenses, including wins over Costa, Marvin Vettori and Whittaker. He lost to Alex Pereira in 2022, then won their rematch to reclaim the title in 2023. The promotion’s title history shows the scale and duration of that championship run, while also marking the distinction between his first reign and the later loss to Strickland.
That context does not erase the losses that preceded the Imavov fight. Adesanya had dropped the title to Strickland in September 2023 and then lost to Dricus du Plessis in August 2024. Imavov’s win therefore came during a real downturn in results, but it was also his first non-title bout in years. Till’s defense focused on the difference between a fighter’s current form and the record built across a long championship run.
Imavov’s finish unfolded after a competitive first round. Adesanya used movement and feints to find range, and the judges each awarded him that opening frame. Early in the second, Imavov pressured him with a right hand and left uppercut that dropped the former champion; referee Marc Goddard stopped the contest at 4:30. Reuters’ report on the bout describes the sequence and Imavov’s resulting push toward title contention. The rapid finish changed the immediate debate, but it did not retroactively alter the title defenses Till cited.
Adesanya’s later loss to Pyfer on March 28, 2026 is another chapter in that record, rather than evidence that Till’s post was a prediction. The comment came the day after the Imavov fight and addressed fans’ reaction at that moment. Keeping those timelines separate makes the point clearer: Till defended what Adesanya had accomplished, while the subsequent results continued to shape the conversation about what might come next.
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Tags: MMA
