Till makes 188-lb fight-day weight, keeps main event alive in Liverpool

After coming in three-and-a-half pounds overweight Saturday, welterweight Darren Till made the 188-lb limit he and Stephen Thompson had later agreed upon, just hours before the beginning of UFC Liverpool on Sunday.

Till will be giving 30 percent of his show money to Thompson to stay in the main event due to missing the 170-lb limit. He agreed to weigh in under 188 pounds by 1 p.m. local time (8 a.m. ET) Sunday and hit the mark in a private room.

The 25-year-old said Saturday that his missed weight was due to a family emergency, but owned the mistake as his own.

"When you fight, and you lose a fight, there’s no excuse. You lose. Same with the battle with the scales," Till told MMAjunkie's Mike Bohn and John Morgan. "This time I lost, and there’s no excuse. I know that the UFC said why I missed and gave some information.

"When I started cutting weight I got an emergency call. It was a family matter. I just had to go to the hospital there and back. I only had five kilos (11 pounds) to go. Usually I have six, seven. I was running. I was OK. I was fine. And I tried to get in the sauna, tried to get in the steam, I tried to do a bath. It just wasn’t happening."

He also missed weight last May against Jessin Ayari, coming in 5 pounds over, and won that bout by unanimous decision.

Till, who has competed at middleweight and often boasts about his above-average size at 170 pounds, is still expected to have a weight advantage over Thompson. The 35-year-old American weighed 185.2 pounds Sunday morning and rarely hits 190, sources told MMA Fighting's Ariel Helwani, while Till, a native of Liverpool, is expected to be above 190 pounds when he walks to the Octagon.

So far in 2018, fighters who have come in overweight and still competed on the card are 6-0.