Derek Brunson is taking the gloves off. The former UFC middleweight contender has signed a multi-fight deal with Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship and will debut Friday, November 20, at BKFC Fight Night inside the Myrtle Beach Sports Center in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
Nolan King broke the signing on X over the weekend, MiddleEasy had the debut date shortly after, and BKFC made it official with a press release Monday. No opponent has been named yet.
Brunson is 42 and spent 21 fights in the UFC. He hasn’t competed since late 2024, when he lost to Rodolfo Vieira at ADXC 7. He was supposed to come back on GFL 1, but that promotion’s ongoing problems wiped the fight off the books, according to Bloody Elbow. So he got stuck waiting on a league that couldn’t get out of its own way, and now he’s walking into a ring with no padding on his hands. Fair enough.
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“I’m excited to compete again,” Brunson said. “I’ve been training for the past three years, getting my younger guys ready. Time to get back out there and have some fun. I have a very strong grind in me right now.”
BKFC founder and president David Feldman sounded happy to have him. “We’re honored to have Derek Brunson sign with BKFC,” Feldman said. “We’ve long admired his world class skills and can’t wait to see him in the Squared Circle. We’re positive he’s going to make some serious noise fighting for BKFC.”
The obvious storyline is Darren Till. Brunson submitted Till in the third round of their UFC Vegas 36 main event at the UFC APEX on September 4, 2021, which was Brunson’s 14th win in the promotion. Till, now 33, joined BKFC in April and has kept his bare-knuckle record clean through two appearances, most recently beating Yoel Romero over five rounds at BKFC 94 in Manchester in September.
Till hasn’t said anything publicly about his old opponent showing up in his new building, per MMA Mania. He also has other irons in the fire. BKFC has put a deadline on a possible Till fight with Tommy Fury, which still has issues to sort out, and Till keeps mentioning former boxing champion Carl Froch.
My take: Feldman shouldn’t feed Brunson a tomato cam in Myrtle Beach, and he shouldn’t throw him to a wolf either. A 42-year-old coming off nearly two years of inactivity needs one real fight to show he still has it. If Brunson wins on November 20, book the Till rematch immediately. Till gets a revenge story, Brunson gets a payday, and BKFC gets two UFC names on a poster who actually have history. That beats waiting on Tommy Fury’s paperwork.
