It was a regular old Tuesday in August, a full seven weeks out from fight night. A simple enough thing, really. Darren Till walked forward for his first BKFC 94 faceoff with Yoel Romero, which is standard fare when promoting a fight like their Sept. 26 bare-knuckle showdown. Till stood in front of the "Soldier of God" in an upright posture, arms dangling at his sides as Romero, wearing sunglasses, burned a hole through Till's navel with his eyes.
Then, as if being brought to life by some primal instinct, his head slowly rose to meet Till's gaze.
Because of the height disparity, Romero had to cock his head at a slight angle, like a cannon taking aim at some distant tree line. Romero chewed his gum, which was the only break from the stillness. Once their locked eyes, both fighters held.
Within 10 seconds of this stare-off, David Feldman, the president of the BKFC, perhaps feeling ill at ease within what was already an unbearable tension, clapped his hands together and told them to face the cameras. All good then, he thought, averting his attention the way a guilty dog might who's caught sneaking things off a plate. But when Feldman looked back up, both fighters were still engaged in the stare down, hypnotists in a battle of will.
"Yoel's a scary guy," Till tells Uncrowned of the escalation. "I think we're all in agreement he's scary. But I'm a fighter's fighter. I'm not scared of any man when it comes to fighting. I'm really not."
Feldman shot his head back and forth as if to comfort himself against the psychic pall, and then fixated on Romero as the Cuban began to lift his arms.
Ever so deliberately, Romero took off his sunglasses to bring out his eyes. If he were Medusa, Till would've turned to stone right then and there in Manchester. If he were blind, Till would've stared into the milky galaxies of his mind in that moment, left to guess at the depths swirling underneath. Romero was seeing right through Till. No, seeing directly into him, in the same manner he peered into the souls of all of us during that ESPN bit, when he told us in a threatening way, "Everything is possible in your life when you believe."
"I was just basically showing him that I might be a younger guy than him and all that — I think he called me a kid in the press conference," Till says. "But I'm not scared of him. I'm like, 'I'm certainly not scared of fighting you at all, Romero.' No fear strikes into my heart. Obviously we get nervous and stuff like that, which is natural, but I'm certainly not scared of Yoel Romero, and I want to show him that."
It was Nietzsche who said, "If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you." That abyss is all consuming. Of voice. Of thought. Of all things rational. Within oblivion, security becomes everlasting hum.
Now they are closer, close enough to feel each other's breath. Close enough to scare up courage or snuff out cowardice. So close that Feldman's security team moved in closer, too, temples pulsing at where things were heading.
Darren Till won his BKFC debut against Aaron Chalmers by second-round knockout. (Photo credit: BKFC)
"Finally, we see Yoel Romero and Darren Till," the emcee belted out, and yet neither man blinked. Gum smacked. Feldman tapped their backs as to say, c'mon now fellas, that's good enough. Till stared straight ahead, as one might into a magic picture.
Into the blacks of Romero's eyes. Into his religious scaffoldings. The conflicts of doing bodily harm. Into traumas that didn't break him, but instead made him stronger. No man should be fighting at age 49, much less with the bare knuckle. No man should be so sadistic as to not recognize his own mortality, yet here was Romero.
Feldman flashed some hands to the two security guards, as if to say "it's OK boys" as they sensed their own necessity coming into play through the tension, anticipating a spill-over. Feldman was now part of the struggle, the ringleader lost in the vortex. Down the rapids he went, as he grabbed both by their shoulders and tried to physically turn them toward the camera.
Nothing doing. Both held. Romero chewed his gum, Till refusing to look away.
