{"id":157271,"date":"2025-11-28T01:54:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T01:54:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/157271\/"},"modified":"2025-11-28T01:54:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T01:54:07","slug":"ufc-324-paddy-pimblett-to-fight-justin-gaethje-for-interim-lightweight-title","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/157271\/","title":{"rendered":"UFC 324: Paddy Pimblett to fight Justin Gaethje for interim lightweight title"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Paddy Pimblett will fight Justin Gaethje for the interim lightweight title at UFC 324 in Las Vegas on 24 January.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The bout between Liverpool&#8217;s Pimblett and American Gaethje has been set up after champion Ilia Topuria revealed he will not fight in the first quarter of 2026 because of a &#8220;difficult moment&#8221; in his personal life.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Pimblett, 30, is fifth in the UFC&#8217;s lightweight rankings with 37-year-old Gaethje one place above him.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Topuria, who won the title after knocking out Charles Oliveira in July, added that the UFC will &#8220;make the match-ups needed&#8221; in his absence.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I won&#8217;t be fighting in the first quarter of next year. I&#8217;m going through a difficult moment in my personal life,&#8221; the Georgian-Spaniard <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/Topuriailia\/status\/1994118172732182784\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow\">wrote on X., external<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I want to focus on my children and resolve this situation as soon as possible.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I don&#8217;t want to hold up the division. As soon as the matters are resolved I&#8217;ll let the UFC know I&#8217;m ready to begin my return.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Pimblett last fought in April where he stopped American Michael Chandler in the third round for his seventh-straight win in the UFC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paddy Pimblett will fight Justin Gaethje for the interim lightweight title at UFC 324 in Las Vegas on&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":157272,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":{"0":"post-157271","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-newzealand","10":"tag-nz","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}