With just weeks left before he faces the fearsome Yoel Romero at BKFC 94 in Manchester, Darren Till found himself under the spotlight. Footage of the former UFC welterweight challenger knocking out a person outside a Liverpool pub gained considerable traction online as well as in news outlets.

The clips sparked concerns and raised questions about what caused Till to lose his cool and strike another man, who was later identified as bare-knuckle fighter Lee Browne. Addressing that curiosity, Till discussed the issue during his recent appearance on the Full Mount MMA podcast. His comments will likely come as a surprise to many.

“So Lee, me and Lee, we haven’t really been having a back and forth,” Till clarified. “He’s been half giving me down the banks for a while now. And then obviously he wanted to fight me on the bare knuckle and stuff like that, but I think he lost his fight. So I don’t think he was with them anymore and stuff like that. So he was in talk with my partner and stuff like that.”

A Liverpudlian like Till, and standing 6 feet and 5 inches tall, 39-year-old Lee Browne has been through a rough patch lately. The record shows him active since 2022, with eight appearances in Conor McGregor co-owned BKFC, where he went 3-5.

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Following two back-to-back losses on Bad to the Bone events, Browne was supposed to face Ste Wallwork on a card billed as Battle of Bolton in March this year. However, the fight was cancelled, with records indicating that Browne withdrew.

Given that slide, Till revealed Browne had approached him for an appearance on his Gorilla promotions. Launched in October last year, Till’s company features a prizefighter-style tournament format with the aim of giving emerging boxing talents a platform. It also incorporates special crossover matchups.

However, given the fact that his promotion is still new and that Browne has barely featured on any of the cards, let alone secure a win, Till reportedly turned Browne’s callout.

What they could do in the meantime, however, was create hype.

“So I said, ‘Look, come to Guerilla; we’ll cause a little bit of a fuss and stuff like that.’ So he caused a little bit of fuss inside,” Till added. “I said, ‘Look, we’ll have a little bit, you know, a little bit of back and forth inside and outside. We’ll get it viral, and we’ll build a name off that. And look, if you—if we get you one or two wins on Guerilla, you know, we can potentially put a head clash in Liverpool and make a big fight out of it.'”

From there, the plan played out. Till claimed that the made-up fracas kicked off with Browne throwing a bottle of water inside to needle him. Till, meanwhile, would take umbrage at the slight and would rough Browne up, which, as it turned out, was the sequence of slaps he threw at Browne.

In that way, both Till and Browne seem to have accomplished what they wanted. They have drawn considerable attention to what could become a burgeoning rivalry. With Browne’s name circulating on social media, Till believes he could be featured on Guerilla’s future cards.

Before Darren Till, others played the same game

Had Till not explained it so well, the fight looked like the real deal, especially because the former UFC fighter has been involved in few such instances in the past. Among those, one notable case was in 2019, when Till and four other British nationals were arrested in Tenerife following reports of hotel vandalism and taxi theft.

Still, Till and Browne are hardly the first fighters to take an unconventional route to build hype.

Within the UFC, one of the clearest examples of fighters staging a rivalry for promotional purposes or, for that matter, for fun came from Jon Jones and Anthony Johnson. Ahead of their fight at UFC 187, the pair staged a fake altercation at the promotion’s “Welcome to the Show” press event.

Much like Till did recently, Johnson later revealed that he had approached Jones backstage and suggested they “do something to get everybody going.” With Dana White standing between them, the pair then recreated scenes from the infamous Jon Jones-Daniel Cormier confrontation.

When White stepped in to intervene, Jones and Johnson broke into laughter and hugged.

While that prank seemingly caught White and likely a few others off guard for a moment, Till and Browne certainly had everyone convinced the confrontation was real for the past few days.

With his explanation, things should finally come to rest now.