Paddy Pimblett is back in camp and preparing for his next fight, with lessons learned from his last loss to Justin Gaethje still stuck in his mind.<\/p>\n
Pimblett lost a decision to Gaethje at UFC 324 back in January. It was an exciting fight, and part of that had to do with both fighters just brawling through the rounds.<\/a> Pimblett is a submission specialist, but he barely even attempted to take Gaethje down. Now Gaethje is moving on to face Ilia Topuria<\/a> for the lightweight belt at the UFC\u2019s big White House event<\/a> in June, leaving Paddy to rebuild towards a title shot.<\/p>\n \u201cSo to be honest, with the last fight, I think a little bit of me ego got in the way\u201d Pimblett said in a new YouTube video. \u201cI wanted to knock him out. I wanted to strike with him and show everyone I could strike with him. When you\u2019re trying to take him down in the fifth round after he bludgeoned you at the end of the second, it\u2019s quite hard. Back to fight IQ. Back to the game plan and not just swinging recklessly.\u201d<\/p>\n The path back starts at UFC 329<\/a> in July, where the worst kept secret in MMA is that Pimblett will face Benoit Saint-Denis at the International Fight Week card. Paddy\u2019s now back in camp after doing his typical in-between fight weight gain, and the struggle is real \u2026 real good?<\/p>\n \u201cBody\u2019s feeling it, as it will be the first few weeks back,\u201d he said. \u201cI had a perfect camp for the last fight, and that never went perfect in the cage. So I think I\u2019m better off having a little bit of a mad disruptive fight camp, and I have my best fights. Bobby Green and Michael Chandler, both fight camps weren\u2019t perfect, but in the end they were perfect when I got in the Octagon. So hopefully this is the same.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI gotta show everyone why I deserve to get that title shot. Show everyone that I\u2019m gonna be getting another one in the near future.\u201d<\/p>\n The path to the lightweight belt will never be as clear as it was at the start of 2024 when Ilia Topuria was out dealing with a contentious divorce<\/a> and Arman Tsarukyan was (is) in the doghouse for all his various shenanigans.<\/a> On the plus side, Topuria is clearly looking to take a side-quest up to welterweight to fight Islam Makhachev.<\/a> But Tsarukyan is quickly becoming undeniable, and then you\u2019ve got beasts like Charles Oliveira and Max Holloway laying in weight above Saint-Denis and Pimblett, who hold the No. 5 and No. 6 rankings respectively.<\/p>\n A win over Saint-Denis \u2014 which is by no means certain \u2014 puts Paddy back in the top five shark tank. Things only get harder from there, but the popular Scouser is ever-confident he can prove his doubters wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paddy Pimblett is back in camp and preparing for his next fight, with lessons learned from his last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":636237,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85,1396],"class_list":["post-636236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636236","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=636236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/636237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=636236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=636236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=636236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}