{"id":28099,"date":"2025-07-28T18:31:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T18:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/28099\/"},"modified":"2025-07-28T18:31:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T18:31:07","slug":"paddy-pimblett-prefers-fight-with-legend-justin-gaethje-over-arman-tsarukyan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/28099\/","title":{"rendered":"Paddy Pimblett prefers fight with \u2018legend\u2019 Justin Gaethje over Arman Tsarukyan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paddy Pimblett<\/a> has big plans for his next fight\u2014and they don\u2019t involve Arman Tsarukyan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tsarukyan battled his way to a No. 1 contender spot and a rematch with Islam Makhachev<\/a> for the lightweight title at UFC 311<\/a> this past January, but everything came crashing down for Tsarukyan when a back injury forced him out of the opportunity a day before fight night. Now, Makhachev has moved up to welterweight, his vacant belt was captured by Ilia Topuria<\/a>, and Tsarukyan is in limbo.<\/p>\n

On the strength of a 7-0 UFC record and having a longstanding rivalry with Topuria, Pimblett appears to be first up to challenge Topuria. Should Pimblett have to fight again, he\u2019s eyeing fan favorite Justin Gaethje<\/a> rather than dealing with Tsarukyan.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d fight anyone as you know, I\u2019m not arsed,\u201d Pimblett said on the One On One<\/a> show. \u201cArman\u2019s a very good fighter but no one cares about him, you know what I mean? People just look at him and think, \u2018Yeah, you shit yourself fighting Islam. You talk a big game but you don\u2019t back it up.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cBut everyone knows Justin Gaethje\u2019s a f*cking banger. Everyone knows that if you\u2019re fighting Justin Gaethje, you\u2019re going to have a fight. And he\u2019s a legend. Arman isn\u2019t. So I\u2019d love to fight another legend in Justin Gaethje.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unfortunately for Pimblett, Gaethje isn\u2019t as intrigued<\/a> by their potential matchup, recently telling ESPN, \u201cIf that\u2019s the route that [the UFC] want me to take, then I don\u2019t believe that they need me anymore.\u201d Gaethje recently defeated Rafael Fiziev<\/a> to pick up his third win in his past four fights and he believes his overall body of work merits consideration for a shot at Topuria.<\/p>\n

Pimblett is also still eyeing Topuria, not just because of their feud, but because he believes it\u2019s what\u2019s best for business right now.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow that Jon Jones<\/a> is retired, I think the biggest fight the UFC can make would be me vs. Ilia,\u201d Pimblett said. \u201cNow there\u2019s no Jon Jones and they can\u2019t do him vs. Tom [Aspinall]. It wouldn\u2019t surprise me if I\u2019ve got the belt in six-to-12 months.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paddy Pimblett has big plans for his next fight\u2014and they don\u2019t involve Arman Tsarukyan. Tsarukyan battled his way…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28100,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[27020,64,63,1913,786,585,27019,19615,1347,10675,785,8936,1640,1641,27018,85,27021,787,1396,3605],"class_list":["post-28099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-arman","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fight","tag-fighting","tag-front-page","tag-gaethje","tag-justin","tag-latest-news","tag-legend","tag-mma","tag-over","tag-paddy","tag-pimblett","tag-prefers","tag-sports","tag-tsarukyan","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28099\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}