BKFC 94 runs on Saturday 26 September 2026 at the AO Arena in Manchester. BKFC founder David Feldman has called it "the biggest event that we've done in Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship history", which is a promoter's framing rather than a verified attendance or revenue figure, but it is plainly the largest room the Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship has booked in Britain. The main event pairs two men who fought for UFC championships and never won one: Darren Till, the Liverpool welterweight who was 17-0-1 when he fought Tyron Woodley, and Yoel Romero, the Olympic silver medallist who spent seven years near the top of the UFC middleweight division without ever leaving with the belt.
They meet at a 190lb catchweight, which is the first thing to get right about this fight, because the sources do not agree on it.
Event details
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Event | BKFC 94 Manchester |
| Date | Saturday 26 September 2026 |
| Venue | AO Arena, Manchester, England |
| Listed start | 2:00pm ET (7:00pm BST) per BKFC and DAZN listings; the AO Arena's own page still shows start time and doors as TBA |
| Main event | Darren Till vs Yoel Romero |
| Co-main | David Mundell (c) vs Jack Cullen, BKFC middleweight world title |
| Broadcast | DAZN (billed as exclusive) |
| Tickets | Ticketmaster, via the AO Arena event page |
| Rules | Bare-knuckle boxing, five two-minute rounds, punching only |
The weight-class question
BKFC's own event listing brands Till vs Romero a "cruiserweight championship" bout. Almost nothing else does. MMA Mania and The Body Lock have described it as a 190lb catchweight, Yahoo Sports lists it under light heavyweight, and the AO Arena's own event page, which is the venue rather than the trade press, states plainly that the two men "will compete at a catchweight of 190 pounds". The Body Lock reports explicitly that no title is on the line.
Where a promoter's listing and everyone else diverge, the specific and repeated figure is the safer one. Treat this as a 190lb catchweight bout, and do not assume a belt is on the line. If BKFC confirms a title is at stake, it will say so plainly nearer the date.
Darren Till: from a UFC title shot to bare knuckle
Till is 33, born in Liverpool on 24 December 1992, and his career has been one long argument about what he might have been. He came through Muay Thai from the age of 12, turned professional at 15, and spent more than three years living and training in Brazil before returning to England in late 2016. He finished his mixed martial arts career at 18-5-1.
The defining night was UFC 228 on 8 September 2018. Till went in unbeaten and left it having been submitted by a D'Arce choke in the second round by Tyron Woodley, the first loss of his career. He moved to middleweight, beat Kelvin Gastelum by split decision at UFC 244 in November 2019, and never won again in the promotion. He was released on 28 February 2023, having asked to be let go.
What followed is the part that matters here. On 30 August 2025 Till won the inaugural MFB bridgerweight boxing title, stopping former UFC middleweight champion Luke Rockhold by knockout in the third round. Then, on 30 May 2026, he made his bare-knuckle debut at BKFC 90 at the Utilita Arena in Birmingham against Aaron Chalmers. Chalmers clipped him with a left hand in the first round and put him down for a count. Till recovered, and knocked Chalmers out 22 seconds into the second round.
One bare-knuckle fight is not a body of evidence. But it answered the specific question that matters in this format, which is whether a fighter can take a clean shot on an unpadded chin and carry on working. Till could.
Yoel Romero: 49 years old and still finishing people
Romero was born in Pinar del Río, Cuba on 30 April 1977, which makes him 49 on fight night. Before he ever threw a punch for money he was a world-class freestyle wrestler: a silver medallist at the 2000 Sydney Olympics at 85kg, world champion in 1999, and a five-time World Championship medallist.
He fought in the UFC from 2013 to 2020 and went 9-4 inside the promotion, with knockouts of Chris Weidman, Lyoto Machida and Luke Rockhold on the record. His overall professional MMA record is 13-5.
He lost to Robert Whittaker for the interim middleweight belt at UFC 213 in July 2017.
His title record is more tangled than a simple win-loss line suggests. He lost to Robert Whittaker for the interim middleweight belt at UFC 213 in July 2017. He then had two further shots at the championship and forfeited his eligibility for both by missing weight: he stopped Rockhold at UFC 221 in February 2018 in a bout that had been for the interim title, weighing in at 187.7lb and so unable to win it, and he lost a split decision to Whittaker for the undisputed belt at UFC 225 in June 2018 after coming in at 185.2lb. His last title challenge, and the only other one he entered eligible to win, was a decision loss to Israel Adesanya at UFC 248 in March 2020. He announced his departure from the UFC in December 2020, signed with Bellator, and lost a light-heavyweight title fight to Vadim Nemkov on points on 16 June 2023.
His bare-knuckle career is short and emphatic. Romero debuted at BKFC 80 at Hard Rock Live in Hollywood, Florida on 12 September 2025, dropping Theo Doukas three times in the second round before the referee waved it off at 1:56. He was booked to face BKFC light-heavyweight champion Lorenzo Hunt at KnuckleMania VI on 7 February 2026 but withdrew with flu; David Mundell, the man defending his title in Manchester's co-main, stepped in at a 199lb catchweight and was knocked out in the fourth round.
So Romero arrives 1-0 in BKFC and, in a strange piece of symmetry, arrives on the same card as the champion who once covered for him.
What the fight actually asks
The two men held a faceoff at the launch press conference on 4 August 2026 that ran three to four minutes without either breaking eye contact, until security stepped in. That is theatre. The competitive questions underneath it are more interesting.
Romero's UFC reputation was built on explosive, compressed bursts of violence separated by long stretches of doing very little, a rhythm that suited five-minute rounds and a scoring system he could win with one sequence. Bare knuckle does not offer him five-minute rounds. BKFC fights two-minute rounds, which compresses the clock and rewards a fighter who is busy from the first second. It also removes the gloves, which historically means more cuts, earlier stoppages and a heavier tax on the hands of anyone who throws a lot.
Till's advantage is age and, on the evidence of the Chalmers fight, recovery. Romero's is that nothing about his last decade suggests his power has left him. Whether a 49-year-old with an Olympic wrestling base can express that power inside a rule set that removes every grappling option he ever had is the honest question of the fight, and nobody can answer it in advance.
For the broader pattern that put both men here, see our guide to why UFC fighters are switching to bare knuckle.
Co-main: David Mundell vs Jack Cullen
The co-main is the most consequential fight on the card in competitive terms, because it is the only world title on it and the main event carries no confirmed belt.
David "The Redneck" Mundell is the reigning BKFC middleweight world champion, an American from Oldsmar, Florida with a 10-2 bare-knuckle record. He won the vacant belt on 3 December 2022 at BKFC 34, stopping Francesco Ricchi by knockout in the third round, and has defended it four times: knockouts of Mike Richman at BKFC 47 in July 2023 and Doug Coltrane at BKFC 53 in November 2023, a stoppage of Danny Christie in October 2024, and a unanimous decision over Donald Sanchez at BKFC 75 in June 2025. He came to bare knuckle in 2019 after a 10-5 professional MMA career across Bellator, CFFC and Titan FC.
The second of his two bare-knuckle losses is recent and worth stating: the non-title catchweight bout against Lorenzo Hunt at KnuckleMania VI in February 2026, taken on short notice in place of Romero, in which Hunt knocked him out in the fourth round. His middleweight title was not at stake and remains with him.
Jack Cullen is the reason this fight sells in Manchester. Born in Bolton, Lancashire on 7 November 1993, and standing 6ft 3in with a 78-inch reach, Cullen is a legitimate British professional boxer rather than a novelty crossover. He finished his gloved career at 22-6-1 with 10 knockouts. On 2 September 2023, in this same building, he stopped defending champion Mark Heffron in the third round to take the British and Commonwealth super-middleweight titles. He lost them in his first defence to Zak Chelli on points at the Liverpool Arena on 20 January 2024, and boxed for the last time on 6 April 2024, a fifth-round stoppage defeat to Luka Plantic in Germany.
He is 2-0 in BKFC, both wins by knockout, most recently over Marley Churcher in the second round on 14 March 2026.
He is 2-0 in BKFC, both wins by knockout, most recently over Marley Churcher in the second round on 14 March 2026. When BKFC bills him as "undefeated", that refers to his bare-knuckle record, not his boxing one.
Cullen would be Mundell's fifth title defence. The stylistic contrast is stark: an orthodox boxer of 6ft 3in with a reach few middleweights have had to solve, against a champion whose entire bare-knuckle identity is built on closing distance and hurting people at short range.
Full announced card
Eleven bouts have been announced. BKFC's event page lists further fights as to be announced.
| Bout | Weight class |
|---|---|
| Darren Till vs Yoel Romero | 190lb catchweight (main event) |
| David Mundell (c) vs Jack Cullen | BKFC middleweight world title |
| Gaz Corran (2-0) vs Mac Bygraves (2-0) | Vacant BKFC UK middleweight title |
| Karl Thompson (c, 4-1) vs Andy Thornton (1-0) | BKFC UK cruiserweight title |
| Joe Lister vs Harrison Cave | Middleweight |
| Mikey Henderson vs Matthew Wiwczaryk | Welterweight |
| Stew Martin vs Curtis Davies | Featherweight |
| Ste Wallwork vs Leigh Cohoon | Middleweight |
| Luke Vaughan vs Bartlomiej Krol | Welterweight |
| Liam Dooley vs Tyrone Hamer | Welterweight |
| Benjamin Lowe vs Dan McGraffin | Middleweight |
BKFC's own listing marks the Corran–Bygraves and Thompson–Thornton bouts only as "championship" contests without naming the belts, but the reporting does name them. Corran and Bygraves, both 2-0, meet for the vacant BKFC UK middleweight title. Karl "The Wasp" Thompson defends the BKFC UK cruiserweight title against Andy Thornton. That makes three championship fights on the card, one world title and two British ones, with no belt confirmed for the main event.
Bout order and the split between the preliminary card and the main card had not been published at the time of writing.
The venue: AO Arena
The AO Arena sits immediately north of Manchester city centre, partly above Victoria station. It opened in July 1995 and holds around 23,000 for concerts and boxing, with a £50 million redevelopment begun in 2022 intended to take capacity to 24,000. It has hosted Ricky Hatton, Amir Khan, Joe Calzaghe, Mike Tyson and David Haye, and more recently the KSI and Logan Paul crossover shows in 2018 and 2023.
That history is the point. Putting a bare-knuckle card into a room that has staged world championship boxing, in a city with Manchester's fight history, is a statement about where BKFC thinks the format now belongs in Britain. Manchester's own fight culture has until now been documented on this site mostly through King of the Ring and the city's knife-crime response; an arena bare-knuckle card is a very different entry point into the same city.
The UK regulatory picture
It is worth being precise about the legal ground BKFC 94 stands on, because it is not the same ground as a BKFC card in the United States.
In more than 30 American states, bare-knuckle boxing is licensed and supervised by an athletic commission with statutory authority. Britain has no equivalent. There is no Act of Parliament banning bare-knuckle boxing and no government body licensing it. The foundational case, R v Coney in 1882, held that a public bare-knuckle prizefight was unlawful and that the fighters' consent was no defence, and that ruling has never been cleanly overturned for modern, medically supervised events. British promotions run instead on private sanctioning, referees with stoppage authority, defined rounds, medical provision and weight matching, all of which strengthen the argument that what they are staging is a "properly conducted sport" within the meaning of later case law.
The full position, including R v Brown and how the UK's promotions actually operate, is set out in our guide to whether bare-knuckle boxing is legal in the UK.
The practical consequence for BKFC 94 is that a card in a 23,000-capacity arena, broadcast on DAZN, is taking place in a sport with no statutory regulator behind it. That is not a prediction of trouble. It is the reason the promotion's own safety and sanctioning arrangements carry more weight in Britain than they do in Florida.
How to watch BKFC 94
| Method | Detail |
|---|---|
| DAZN | Listed broadcaster, billed as exclusive, with a 2:00pm ET start time (7:00pm BST) |
| Tickets | Ticketmaster, linked from the AO Arena event page |
The 2:00pm ET start is BKFC's and DAZN's listed time. The AO Arena's own page still shows doors and start time as to be confirmed, so treat the schedule as provisional until the venue publishes it.
10 / Up next / Where BKFC 94 sits in the UK expansion
Ticket prices had not been verified at the time of writing. Reports that early sales forced the arena to release additional seating have circulated, but no attendance or sell-out figure has been confirmed by the venue or the promotion, and such claims before an event are promotional framing rather than fact.
Where BKFC 94 sits in the UK expansion
BKFC ran its first British show, BKFC 27, in London on 20 August 2022, then bought the UK-based Bare Fist Boxing Association in September 2022 and folded it into a domestic arm, BKFC UK. That story is covered in full in BKFC's UK expansion. Through 2026 the promotion has run three British cards ahead of this one: Fight Night Newcastle at the Utilita Arena on 14 March, BKFC 90 at the Utilita Arena in Birmingham on 30 May, the show where Till made his bare-knuckle debut, and a second Newcastle Fight Night at the Walker Activity Dome on 1 August.
BKFC 94 is the escalation. A former UFC welterweight title challenger from Liverpool, a former UFC middleweight title challenger from Cuba, a world title fight underneath them featuring a former British and Commonwealth champion, two British belts on the same card, and an arena that has hosted Hatton and Calzaghe. For a promotion that arrived in Britain four years ago and bought a small domestic operator a month later, that is a considerable distance travelled.
For the wider structure of BKFC's British operation, including its rules, roster and how it compares with BKB, see the BKFC UK guide. For the promotion's global event history, see BKFC's major events. London remains the other centre of gravity for British bare knuckle, covered in our London guide.
What has not been confirmed
Stated plainly, so it is clear what this page is not claiming:
- No result. BKFC 94 has not happened. Nothing here predicts or reports an outcome.
- No title on the main event. BKFC's listing calls it a cruiserweight championship; the AO Arena's own event page and the trade press call it a 190lb catchweight, and The Body Lock reports no belt is at stake. We follow the latter.
- No ticket prices, no attendance figure, no sell-out claim.
- No bout order and no confirmed preliminary/main-card split.
- No confirmed start time from the venue. BKFC and DAZN list 2:00pm ET; the AO Arena still shows TBA.
This page will be updated when BKFC publishes further detail, and again after the event.
Sources for this page include BKFC's official event listing for BKFC 94 Manchester, the AO Arena's own event page (the source for the 190lb catchweight and for the unconfirmed start time), MMA Mania and The Body Lock on the announcement, Yahoo Sports for the full card and belt designations, Bloody Elbow's coverage of the 4 August launch press conference, ESPN and FightMag on BKFC 90 and BKFC 80, and public fight records for Till, Romero, Mundell and Cullen. Where BKFC's own listing conflicts with the reporting, the conflict is stated on this page rather than resolved silently.
