Tactical Guide to Darren Till Vs. Stephen Thompson

Darren Till exploded into the consciousness of many MMA fans when he battered Donald Cerrone in late 2017. Cerrone was Till’s first "name" opponent but is entering the twilight of his career, is undersized at welterweight, and was tailor made for Darren Till to box up. This weekend Till meets Stephen "Wonderboy" Thompson, a man in exile having lost two close fights with Tyron Woodley, the second of which was so tedious that he will likely not get a third shot. Thompson is as slick as they come on the feet, pushing forward a style of striking straight out of the 1970s kickboxing scene and doing things that would have been laughed off as impractical or impossible just a few years ago.

Both men have interesting quirks and we have written about both before, so let’s not beat around the bush with the general game of each man. Let us delve into the specifics of the match-up and explore what each man can do to hinder the other.

Hypothetical Gameplans

Darren Till faces the same stumbling blocks that everyone does when matched against Stephen Thompson. How does a fighter make Thompson engage on their terms, without simply walking onto stopping side kicks and counter left straights? At his most simplistic, Thompson is just a counter-puncher who keeps a strict control of distance. His opponents keep trying to close it and he’s only going to let them if he thinks he can run them onto something good and get away without getting hurt. We discussed this extensively in The Distance Trap.

Running onto a straight left can happen, but Thompson is much more inclined to drop away on a slight angle and fire a straight through the open side as the opponent recovers from over-extending. Interestingly, this is something that Thompson can do with a degree of ambidexterity. He has performed it as a southpaw fighter against orthodox opponents and, when meeting a southpaw like Johny Hendricks, Thompson has taken up the orthodox stance to create the same opening. The over-commitment with the rear hand from an open stance scenario leaves a fighter completely exposed for the counter left straight through that slight angle and this has proven to be a killer counter punch from the days of Benny Leonard versus Lew Tendler to Conor McGregor versus whoever.

Thompson cracking current UFC middleweight champion, Robert Whittaker.

Benny Leonard retreating to the open side and firing a right straight in through the same angle, over a century earlier.

And wouldn’t you know it, here’s that Scouse lad doing the same thing.

There are a few means of stifling a counter fighter’s distance trap but the first and most important is using the boundaries: the ropes or fence. Every Thompson fight is decided by distance: he controls the distance, keeps it how he wants it for a little while, assesses his opponents’ aggression and leads or counters based on that. There are fighters for whom distance is something to be overcome in order to throw more hands, but for Thompson the fight starts and ends with distance with some strikes landed in between. But that means constant adjustment, constant re-establishing of the buffer zone, and all the back-stepping punches, check hooks, and open-side counters in Thompson’s arsenal require space for him to retreat into. Put him near the fence and half of the subtleties that Thompson’s feet bring to striking exchanges are immediately muted.

Darren Till showed excellent ring awareness against Donald Cerrone, placing him on the fence and hammering him with hard strikes in this disadvantaged position, but similarities between Cerrone and Thompson are few and far between. Thompson is a top notch ring general and Cerrone is nothing close to that. Study the few moments that Johny Hendricks, Robert Whittaker, and others were close to cornering Thompson and you will realize that he knows exactly how much he relies on space and is always aware of where he shouldn’t be.

Direction changes to get off the fence and a constant awareness of just where the fence is are the keys to great defensive ringcraft.

Moving Thompson to the fence is going to be hard work, but pressuring in that direction will force engagements and action from the ordinarily measured Thompson. Till has shown an understanding of feints to go along with his pressure, constantly pumping his left shoulder and hip, and while he rarely uses his jab as much as he should, let alone shows a double, it will certainly come in handy—especially when Thompson is southpaw. Feints combine with pressure to make distance based counter strikers move without opening up or wasting energy. It is a tricky business trying to decide which movements are worth picking up on and which are worth ignoring in a split second window, and when fighters stop reacting to feints they make themselves easy marks for clean leads.

When we discussed The Distance Trap, we talked about Sean O’Malley being caught off guard by a bumping shuffle step. Bringing the rear foot up near to the lead and pushing off it is not basic boxing but it is a great way to cover much more distance that most fighters are used to. Not only does this cover more distance and increase the chances of cracking an opponent while he retreats, it also plays with the opponents sense of distance. While Till hasn’t shown a propensity to double jab in his UFC tenure, he has used shoulder fakes to shuffle up and make distance for his left straight, which shows an understanding of the principle.

This kind of double feinting and covering distance should work to force Thompson into giving up ground quicker than he would like and thereby bring the fight closer to the fence more often. Along the fence, Till should look to land his heavy round kicks and to sneak the left straight through as these are his money strikes. More importantly the left elbow has proven an excellent weapon for Till when his man starts parrying or slipping the left straight.

Another trick which it would be good to see Till use in closing the distance is foot trapping. Whether Thompson is southpaw or orthodox, he fights from a lengthy stance that allows him to push off of the mat in front or behind him and create or close distance rapidly. This stance does, however, mean that he is rarely on top of his feet and rather balanced between them. Long stances like this allow a fighter to create distance rapidly—often mitigating traditional low kicks unless they are well set up or applied along the boundaries of the cage or ring—but it is very susceptible to sneaky, short foot sweeps and traps. As a fighter scuttles backwards as fast as he can his lead foot can be knocked across him or outwards with a short kick at the ankle. This is usually done with a skip up and lead leg kick or hooking of the foot. The actual strike accomplishes nothing in terms of damage, but complicates the retreat and pulls the fighter out of his stance. The low foot hook or kick can immediately be placed down in front of the advancing fighter and followed with actual strikes against an out-of-position opponent.

Here Yoel Romero demonstrates the foot trap. Notice that as Tim Kennedy’s lead foot lightens to retreat, it becomes much more susceptible to being knocked out of position. This technique works best against mobile fighters who are happy to retreat from exchanges.

One of Rory MacDonald’s few moments of success against Thompson was in skipping up and tapping the lead foot of the elusive karateka. Ironically one of the main proponents of these tapping low kicks in MMA was Lyoto Machida but, while they work wonderfully against fleet footed distance fighters, most of Machida’s opponents were heavy footed and plodding so the kick rarely had its full effect.

Stephen Thompson is in the position where, if Darren Till cannot demonstrate some smart ringcraft, he might not have to bring too many new looks. Thompson’s style is to ask questions of his opponent rather than offer answer to theirs. Staying off the fence and out in the center of the cage is obviously to Thompson’s advantage. If Till simply plods after Thompson, as Jorge Masvidal did, expect Thompson to dart in and out with pairs of straight punches and pile up his points that way. In terms of kicking though, Till’s southpaw stance makes things interesting.

While Thompson can hit his open-side counters off both stances, his kicking game seems very different in southpaw and orthodox positions. Almost all of Thompson’s lead leg kicking is done from his more bladed southpaw stance, while he throws more bread-and-butter kickboxing stuff focused on the rear leg from his orthodox stance. Darren Till being a southpaw means that when Thompson fights with his strong leg forward he is in a closed guard engagement. Typically Thompson likes the side kick and the hook kick with the lead leg, and using the defensive side kick to essentially start him into motion to move back on that forty-five degree angle to make the open-side counter. Obviously if he fights southpaw against Till that lead leg hook kick becomes a lot higher risk and a lot lower reward—with Till being a turn of the shoulders or a duck below the shoulder line away from the kick being worthless. Nicolas Dalby caught Till with a pair of high kicks over his right shoulder—it’s not impossible—but that was in the third round as Dalby pushed up the pace and stayed in a tired Till’s face.

More likely, as against Johny Hendricks, it will be that lead leg side kick and the standard round kick off the lead leg which form a staple of Thompson’s kicking in this fight. This was the pairing that won "Superfoot" Bill Wallace most of his fights, with the odd hook kick thrown in. The side kick draws the elbows down and in; the high kick flicks up and around from a very similar chamber. It’s a simple idea but Wallace and Thompson are a rare breed that can put it into practice against world class opponents. The closed guard match-up does increase the chances of Thompson wheel-kicking if Till lingers on the end of its range, though—turning kicks coming in on the open side from such a stance match-up.

One interesting consideration with this sort of match-up is: does it help or hurt the more adaptable fighter to go to his other skills? Darren Till has done good work as both an ultra-aggressive striker and a laid back counter striker, and in some matches (such as the Dalby one) he effectively switched between the two for periods of the bout. Stephen Thompson, meanwhile, works mainly with what his opponents give him, reluctantly pot-shotting when his opponent waits for him. We all recall that the tag line of the second Woodley fight was “I promise I’ll let my hands go this time.” So does Till do better by going to Wonderboy and trying to play the aggressor against a great counter-striker, or does he sit back and try to make Wonderboy play the role that most of the time he looks uncomfortable in?

Certainly you would think that Till has the advantage as the exchanges lengthen. Thompson has been caught off good counters in the same way that Lyoto Machida and Kyoji Horiguchi has—he times a perfect connection and then admires his work, or hangs around throwing hands when his boxing just isn’t up to snuff. Jake Ellenberger dropped Thompson in this way.

It might benefit Till to simply play the bully here, accepting that the counters are going to come and try to stick to Thompson with a collar tie or catch him with a hook before he exits. Till’s work with elbows and knees has been very impressive and frequent so far in the Octagon, it would be well in his interest to manufacture chances to use these weapons which Wonderboy essentially eschews. Whether that be by making ugly exchanges after pushing forward, or by clinching and physically pushing Thompson to the fence.

What makes this a fantastic match-up is that both men are clever enough and talented enough that there are any number of ways it could unfold. Unlike, say, the Maia vs. Usman fight last weekend—wherein most expected a slog where Maia couldn’t get the takedown—this welterweight tilt is surrounded by questions and they don’t stop dead if one man can’t do one thing in one area of the fight. Whether it’s an outright banger or a tentative snoozer, Thompson vs. Till has big ramifications for the division, watch the fight and get back here Monday if it was any good.

Jack wrote the hit biography Notorious: The Life and Fights of Conor McGregor and hosts the Fights Gone By Podcast.