Paddy Pimblett currently has no fight date set and unless the UFC moves quickly, the Liverpool fighter will be out until the second quarter of the year.
Pimblett hasn’t fought since the quick fight one minute performance win over Benoit Saint-Denis in July. He’s been idle since then, and it looks like he’ll be idle for the rest of the year unless the UFC suitors pull something out of their hat.
When asked by All Out Fighting how close he is to announcing his next fight, he said, “Not close.”
“I don’t know what’s going on at the moment,” Pimblett continued. “We’ll have to find out. My division could book all the fighters in my division. It looks like Charles (Oliveira) versus (Diego) Lopes for BMF. And then it looks like Arman (Tsarukyan) will fight Justin (Gaethje).”
“And then only Ilia (Topuria) and Max (Holloway) are above me. I think Max will fight for Conor (McGregor) to get that trilogy. So really only Ilia is left. So we’ll have to see what happens in the next few months.”
Pimblett was not a fan of his infamous experience Fat Buddy diet over the Christmas holidays so you can rule out the January struggle.
“Never fight in January again,” declared Pimblett. “March, April is – if I don’t fight before the end of the year, it’s March, April.”
On the plus side, there doesn’t seem to be literally anyone else for Pimblett and Topuria, so we may get this long-awaited fight by default. Paddy can’t wait and believes Ilia is mentally weak after this his loss to Justin Gaethje in June.
“He’s never been lost before, so I don’t think he’ll ever be the same when he comes back,” Pimblett said. “You know, I lost my first fight when I was 18 and I had to rebuild and then I had to do it again when I was 22 or 23. He’s never lost before and he’s like 27 or something. So his whole aura was ‘invincible’ and this and that.”
“Now he’s getting beat. It’s in his head and I’ll prove it when I fight him next.”
