There isn’t much juice left in Ultimate Fighter, but Paddy Pimblett believes it’s still worth a squeeze.
“The Baddy” has fought twice in 2026, losing a tough decision to Justin Gaethje for the interim lightweight title and then bouncing back. 52 second submission Benoit Saint Denis at UFC 329. Gaethje’s loss is aged quite well. Pimblett made it to the final bell, which is more than Paddy’s rival Ilia Topuria can say. After a slick BSD win, Pimblett and Topuria are suddenly in the same orbit and a fight between the two would be huge.
Pimblett thinks it’s so huge it’s worth a whole season The ultimate fighter with these two as coaches.
“I don’t have any fights booked at the moment, but I would love to fight Ilia Topuria,” Pimblett recently told Kolose MMA. “I’d beat him so badly I’d send him back down to featherweight. I think me and Ilia Topuria would make a great season of The Ultimate Fighter because I’d get under his skin so much that if we got into a fight, I’d beat him as fast as McGregor beat Aldo.”
“The Ultimate Fighter would be a really fun six weeks, to say the least, if it was me and him.”
In a perfect world, the UFC would book Pimblett and Topuria for a December fight. The fight is already big enough and Paddy vs. Ilia’s TUF season would be more about The Ultimate Fighter than the fight itself. Not even Conor McGregor could get people to tune in to TUF. It is sucked dry. Obsolete. Let it die.
If the UFC decides to make Paddy Vs. Ilia TUF season (and never doubt that UFC CEO Dana White always does has a soft spot for a format that turned things around for the promotion), it may be a long, long time before we finally see the coaches do battle. As Pimblett mentioned, the show takes six weeks to film. Then it takes four or five months to put the show together. The show will then run weekly for three months. The wait is more than 10 months.
So if you want to see Ilia Topuria vs. Paddy Pimblett, pray to the MMA gods that they don’t do a season of The Ultimate Fighter together.