Paddy Pimblett may have started 2026 on a down note, but he wants to end the year with a bang.<\/p>\n
In January, Pimblett lost his interim lightweight title fight to Justin Gaethje at UFC 324. This weekend, Pimblett looks to rebound from his first UFC loss when he takes on Benoit Saint Denis in the co-main event of UFC 329. In the main event above him, Conor McGregor makes his long-awaited octagon return, rematching Max Hollowayin in McGregor\u2019s first fight in five years, and should they both win, Pimblett thinks a matchup with McGregor would make the most sense.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe perfect fight for me would be Conor,\u201d Pimblett said in a video posted to UFC Europe\u2019s social media accounts.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s mad, to be honest, because obviously, I won seven fights in a row, and I don\u2019t think my stock went up as much as losing me last fight. I beat people like Michael Chandler, Bobby Green, Tony Ferguson, and people are just like, \u2018Eh.\u2019 Then I just got me head punched in for five rounds, and me stock went up. People are saying I lost, but I won, you know what I mean?\u201d<\/p>\n
Pimblett has been one of the most popular fighters in the UFC since making his promotional debut, and even drew comparisons to McGregor for his rabid fanbase. However, at UFC 329, even Pimblett knows he\u2019s not the main character this weekend.<\/p>\n
\u201cMad being on the same card as Conor McGregor,\u201d Pimblett said. \u201cThe biggest name in the sport. It\u2019s nice for him to be back. This is probably going to be the most-watched UFC of all time. I\u2019m not going to be the star of the show on this one. Definitely not. Conor is. But I\u2019ll probably be the second star of the show.\u201d<\/p>\n
And if the stars align and both men win their fights? Pimblett thinks the best thing to do would be to take the two biggest names in the UFC and have them fight it out at the world\u2019s most famous arena: Madison Square Garden.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf McGregor wins and I win, I want to fight again before the end of the year,\u201d Pimblett said. \u201cI\u2019ll fight him at welterweight in MSG. Something like that?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got to let everything unfold. You don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen. Conor\u2019s got to beat Max, I\u2019ve got to beat BSD. Anything can happen, as we know. In fighting sports, one punch can change the whole realm of the game. The butterfly effect, it can change everything for every other opponent.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paddy Pimblett may have started 2026 on a down note, but he wants to end the year with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":786434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":["post-786433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786433","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=786433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/786434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=786433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=786433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=786433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}