Paddy Pimblett has climbed four places to a career-high No. 5 in the latest UFC Meta lightweight rankings following his first-round submission victory over Benoit Saint-Denis at UFC 329. The Englishman moves up from No. 9 after stopping the French contender in just 52 seconds.<\/p>\n
Pimblett\u2019s victory over Saint-Denis, who entered the contest ranked No. 5, saw the pair effectively swap positions near the top of the division. Saint Denis dropped three places to No. 8, while Pimblett recorded the highest ranking of his UFC career after bouncing back from his January defeat to interim champion Justin Gaethje.<\/p>\n
Following the rankings update, Pimblett reflected on the significance of the victory. \u201cIt took a lot [to get back],\u201d said Pimblett on the About Last Fight podcast. \u201cThis fight camp wasn\u2019t easy. Getting to this point wasn\u2019t easy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pimblett also revealed he had questioned his future before the bout. \u201cAbout four or five weeks ago, I turned to Paul and I was like, \u2018Listen, if I don\u2019t win this fight, what\u2019s the point in fighting anymore? I might as well retire,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cIf I can\u2019t beat BSD, then I\u2019m never gonna be a world champion, and that\u2019s what I do this for.\u201d<\/p>\n
Elsewhere in the updated lightweight rankings, Quillan Salkilld slipped one place to No. 9 following Pimblett\u2019s rise, while Tom Nolan and Dan Hooker exchanged places at No. 11 and No. 12 respectively. Pimblett also called for a rematch with newly crowned lightweight champion Justin Gaethje after his win in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n
Outside the lightweight division, former middleweight champion Robert Whittaker entered the light heavyweight rankings at No. 12 after defeating Nikita Krylov at UFC 329, while Wang Cong climbed four places to No. 6 in the women\u2019s flyweight rankings following her victory over Tracy Cortez.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paddy Pimblett has climbed four places to a career-high No. 5 in the latest UFC Meta lightweight rankings…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":799705,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":["post-799704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799704","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=799704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799704\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/799705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=799704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=799704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=799704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}