Robert Whittaker and Darren Till are both recovering from a significant fall in their valuation. Whittaker has proven himself to be among the best fighters going by having won the world middleweight title and in doing so achieved as much as many professionals could ever dream of. But when he met the tricky Israel Adesanya in his last bout, Whittaker looked out of sorts and showed more desperation with each attack. Knocked out in the second round with only flashes of marginal success on the feet and nary a takedown attempted, it made fans stop and rethink just who Whittaker is and what he brings to the table.

Whittaker is 75% technician and 25% goofy slugger in the same way that Dustin Poirier is, and you can see him going between a beautiful jab and just outright swinging in every fight. When he lost his title against Adesanya it was an inability to adapt on the fly or use cage craft to his advantage that left Whittaker attempting the same running charges over and over. Always in great condition, Whittaker never slowed down but in turn never stopped to rethink these wild charges and so was eventually read, timed, and knocked out. Whittaker probably regrets his complete refusal to wrestle or change up his tactics in that fight and Till—a sharp puncher with great reactions—provides him a chance to show some new ideas or better application of existing ones.

Darren Till is in a slightly different position: he is not at risk of being thought a has-been because in some regards he never was. Till shot into title contention at welterweight after obliterating Donald Cerrone—by merit of having all the habits and skills that Cerrone hates. A tedious fight with Stephen ‘Wonderboy’ Thompson followed and suddenly Till was in with the champion, Tyron Woodley. Till was dominated and failed to land a single significant strike before being knocked down and submitted in the second round. He then set about slapping Jorge Masvidal upside the head but got caught with his chin in the air and accidentally kicked off MMA’s quickest and latest rise to stardom for Masvidal.

Yet Till has already begun bouncing back. On the tail end of 2019 Till moved up to middleweight and took on a top fifteen opponent in Kelvin Gastelum. It seemed like Gastelum’s speed and power could be nightmarish for Till and his defensive liabilities. Instead Till fought an uncharacteristically thougthful gameplan, picking with kicks from range and occasionally snapping off his one-two, but ducking into a clinch to cut Gastelum off whenever he looked to be firing back.

It is worth noting that Till’s one-two and left straight are his best weapons generally. His left straight comes out from down by his chest and his jab often shoots out from a dangling position over his lead thigh, which seems to compound with the awkwardness of being a southpaw for many of his opponents. In the Masvidal fight, Till lanced his left straight through every time he attempted it and the bout came down to Masvidal eating blows and then returning—trying to catch Till with his hands down and chin up in the air after every attack. Till’s first legitimate attack on Tyron Woodley, in the second round of their bout, was a one-two and Woodley read it perfectly and cracked Till with his head high and his shoulders low.

The reason that Woodley was able to read Till’s blows while others weren’t was that Till was not able to effectively apply feints. He had spent the entire first round showing only feints and not throwing a legitimate blow because Woodley kept clinching with him or threatening a takedown when he moved in.

In the Gastelum fight, Till used his clinch entries to stifle Gastelum in the same manner that Woodley had done to him, and crucially cut Gastelum’s flurries off at the first punch. Entering the clinch off his one-two also allowed Till to hide his defensive shortcomings after “shooting his shot”.

Hypothetical Gameplans

There are still a great many questions about Darren Till as a middleweight. It was no secret that he relied on being a hulking presence at welterweight and often had a good deal of height over his opponents, which forced them to throw up at him and allowed him get away with laziness in his defence after throwing his left hand. Essentially Till would skewer opponents and either not bother with an exit plan or simply pull his head straight back and rely on his opponent falling short. The Gastelum fight was technically promising—a real savvy performance—but it was one that took Till out of the game with which he has made his name. Till wasn’t doing much hurting but rather scoring a good shot or a good low kick every ten seconds or so and then smothering the return.

However, we have all seen fighters put in one “safe” or smart performance on the heels of a couple of hard losses, only to go back to their old ways in the next one. Darren Till might well come out with his chin high, press Whittaker back, and start flapping his hands to frustrate his man before dropping the left straight. Effectively the Gastelum performance looked like the experimental phases of something that he could build into his game effectively. Should he go back to playing the bully, scoring with his quick hands, and then forcing clinches to smother the return, it might close the circuit on his offensive work nicely. Especially in this fight as Whittaker works well in the pocket on the second and third punches—particularly with his murderous left hook. But if we are honest about the Gastelum fight, the clinch work was close to a fifty-fifty because Till kept putting his own back on the fence, even though Gastelum rarely threatened a trip or takedown.

Whittaker is similar to Gastelum as a another former welterweight, but in the six years since he changed division he has bulked up considerably. The former champ has had success wrestling at 97kg (217 lbs) in the off season. While Till looked cunning in the Gastelum fight, he never looked close to the destructive force he was at welterweight—where he played the bully through each of the three rounds. If Whittaker is any more successful in the clinch than Gastelum, even at stalling along the cage wall, Till could be looking down the barrel of a coin flip decision if he cannot land more effectively and convincingly in the moments he is out in the open.

If Till intends to use the clinch to hold, he needs to stop letting his man turn him onto the fence and do all the threatening with takedown attempts, even if it ineffective and largely for appearances. If he intends to use the clinch just to smother returns and then re-establish range he shouldn’t be waiting for the referee to break him because this isn’t kickboxing and if his opponent even looks like they’re trying to work the ref will probably let them hold Till static for another ten or fifteen seconds. Now if Till could get his head post and break from clinches as reliably as Leon Edwards—scoring the elbow on every break—his hand speed and power could make him a punch-and-clutch nightmare for anyone.

Or Till could go the other way. Instead of practice in stifling, the Gastelum fight could have been the foundations of Till becoming a more effective laid-back counter striker. He wasn’t able to score with too many telling blows in that one but with a better practised defensive counter striking game and control of the distance, Till could apply some of the same skills he used to use when he had opponents backed onto the fence and lashing out wildly. Against Whittaker a counter fighting gameplan might be a good shout because Whittaker has always been a mix of crisp and sloppy—leading three entries with clean strikes and and then lunging wildly on a fourth. But everyone and their mother saw Whittaker rushing chin-first to close the distance on the taller, rangier Adesanya. Till might not have the height to lean back at the waist and place his head a day’s march from Whittaker’s fists, but he could retreat and fade away from shots to try and draw Whittaker onto the left straight or left knee before entering the clinch.

When jotting down an ideal gameplan for Whittaker, you have to hope he will be willing to use his wrestling offensively as it was sorely missing in his performance against Adesanya. For the most part Whittaker’s wrestling has looked great in MMA and he clearly has an incredible aptitude for it despite not coming through a strong school wrestling system in Australia, but in MMA he has shined using it defensively rather than in pursuing takedowns. At least threatening the takedown once or twice a round would be a great way of easing up his task on the feet against Till.

Some adjustments that Till made for the Gastelum fight might create some new openings for Whittaker. In order to make the slight level change and drop into clinches under Gastelum’s punches, Till stood in a longer, deeper stance than he usually does and was much heavier on the lead leg. Think back to Till’s welterweight run before the Cerrone fight and you will remember that he tended to stand a lot higher in his stance and made heavy use of the retracting the lead leg or throwing the hips back to defend low kicks. It was this, his powerful kicks and his hand traps to elbows that first caught most fight fans eyes—it hinted at that real Muay Thai in MMA that fans are always hoping for. The way that Till stood for the Gastelum fight presented the lead leg and Gastelum was able to score pretty much at will with his low kicks. Whittaker is an orthodox fighter and Gastelum is a southpaw so Whittaker would probably have to go after Till’s lead leg with his own lead leg and use step up kicks, but he has fallen in love with the low line side kick since Yoel Romero snapped his patela off in the first minute of their first fight, and that could well work great to do damage, score points, and to draw Till up out of his stance.

If Whittaker can force Till to stand shorter and higher, he has a better chance at getting the underhooks when they collide and also faces less chance of being hurt by that stern left straight as he comes in. If Till doesn’t start coming up out of his stance, Whittaker can blast away at the lead leg, but more importantly he might be able to start using low kicks and low line side kicks to enter and start hitting with his hands as Till is thrown out of position by the kicks.

Should Whittaker be unable to coax Till into a higher stance he can still threaten the takedown on the lead leg. The post single for which Frankie Edgar was famous, and which Joe Benavidez used well in recent years, can be entered with the rear hand doing the posting—throwing a open-palmed right straight into the opponent’s lead shoulder—and the lead hand making the pick up for the single leg.

Use of cage craft is also an important consideration for Whittaker and is something he should have been working on after the Adesanya fight anyway. Adesanya was able to keep leaning back and falling away from blows because Whittaker kept chasing his head in the middle of the cage. A bit of effective pressure—even backed up by physical pushing and hard front kicks to force his man back—would have at least given Adesanya the opportunity to run out of track and hit the fence. Whittaker’s jab is among the stiffest and longest in MMA but this being MMA it is still a relatively close-range weapon. His other money strike is the left hook which is about as close in a blow as you can have outside of the clinch. Placing the fence at his man’s back would allow him to control the distance between himself and the opponent without them getting a say, and would remove one moving part from the equation of landing good punches.

On the subject of front kicks, Whittaker will often use his right front kick to enter. Against Brad Tavares he threw a snap kick at Tavares’s head to stand Tavares up and then leaped in with the left hook, but against Yoel Romero and others he used the right front kick to dig to the body, to lift the opponent up out of their stance, and to drop him into a southpaw stance inside punching range. He would often follow the right front kick with a southpaw overhand left. As Till loves the slight retreat and open side counter, pushing him off his base with front kicks and leaping in behind them could disarm one of his best weapons and get Whittaker in position to work his own.

And of course Whittaker’s greatest asset is largely an unknown in Till. Whittaker has previously worked five rounds at a torrid pace, where Till has a single five rounder on his record and that fight is best remembered as one in which almost nothing happened. Whether out in the open or in a grinding clinch, this fight looks better down the stretch for Whittaker the more that he can make Till exert himself in the early going.