“What is this guy who looks like a dead ringer for Jay from The Inbetweeners doing in my YouTube recommended videos, and why does it look like he’s a fighter?”
I remember asking myself that question during one of Melbourne’s lockdowns in September of 2021.
I was even more flummoxed when I saw that the video was posted by the UFC. The video was called ‘Meet Paddy ‘the Baddy’ Pimblett’ and was posted just before his first fight in the UFC.
I watched the video and worked out immediately why the UFC wanted me to watch it: Pimblett is a talker of the finest order.
He’s not a witty trash talker in the mould of a Conor McGregor circa 2014, nor is he a pure heel like Chael Sonnen. He’s just fascinating to watch talk. It’s pure charisma. You’d listen to him read a phone book.
Then I saw the highlights. He walked in almost like he was going to a party, reminiscent of Manny Pacquaio walking in with a smile.
Except Paddy is there dancing on his way to the cage. As soon as he steps in there, though, it’s all business. His eyes narrow. His body tenses. His eyes do not come off his opponent.
He fights wildly, flailing punches in bunches but his feet are all over the place. The highlights show pressure on top of pressure. He gets tagged basically once a minute on his own highlight tape. On the ground he’s more measured, obviously more comfortable, clearly better.
Everything about boxing and MMA is different, except that both sports have people fighting each other. But there are some eternal truths that spread across the two sports.
One of them is that good talkers sell fights and generate buzz. Another is that guys who fight with their chin up like a lantern in a storm and still find ways to win are simply fun to watch.
Paddy is both.
The combination of a relatively kamikaze fighting style and the charisma factory of a personality that Pimblett brings to the game makes him a likely seller of PPVs in the ‘churn out the stars then spit ’em out’ model that the UFC cartel has become expert in.
Only a few fighters can say they have truly transcended the UFC brand: McGregor and Rousey for certain, and you could make arguments for fighters like Jon Jones, Georges St Pierre, or maybe even Nate Diaz, though I think that they would all be unsuccessful arguments.
Conor McGregor. (Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile via Getty Images)
Pimblett could join that elite list of fighters who actually become generationally wealthy and globally recognisable within the confines the rigid UFC pyramid structure, designed to keep the decision-makers making billions and the fighters lucky to clear $1000 after training and management fees.
There are two key reasons why I believe Pimblett has this potential.
The first, and strongest, is Pimblett. Paddy has a distinct look and feel. He doesn’t identify as English, he identifies as Liverpudlian and he is adored in his home town for it.
Step 1 in building a fighter now and until the end of time is make him a superstar in his own backyard. Pimblett waltzed into the UFC as that, and the UFC has built on that by putting him on the last two UFC London cards.
His star in wider England is growing. They are even giving him the lights out before the ring walk treatment usually reserved for main event fighters. When the Tiesto song that he walks out to starts you can feel the electricity through the screen.
His look also contributes to his very particular stardom. He has a shaggy blonde bowl cut that is out of place in a UFC replete with buzzcuts and short back and sides. He really does look like Jay from The Inbetweeners.
It is such a stark contrast to everyone else, just as soon as you look at him. I was showing my partner a video of his octagon interview after choked out Leavitt yesterday and she immediately started laughing and asked, incredulously, “Is he seriously a fighter?”
He is, and to my untrained eye, he seems to be a pretty good one.
That very octagon interview is the last thing I want to touch on here. I said at the top that I would watch Paddy read a phone book. He is a compelling figure to watch and listen to. But he also regularly has something interesting to say, even if he has gone to the Tyson Fury school of saying you don’t want credit for all of your charitable work while constantly talking about your charitable work.
Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder exchange punches during their WBC Heavyweight Championship title fight. (Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images)
Forgive my cynicism, because Sunday was truly his most impressive octagon interview as he revealed to Michael Bisping that his friend from Liverpool had died by suicide. He was obviously emotional and on the verge of tears.
He called passionately for awareness about men’s mental health. Footage of him leaving the cage after his biggest win to date showed him bawling. In interviews after the fight with BT Sport and the UFC he was prepared with statistics about suicide in men between 21 and 45.
He had clearly prepared to win, prepared to talk about this, and was able to effectively articulate himself on an issue that he feels strongly about.
But more than that, he was human.
This is relatively rare for fighters, especially in a UFC that promotes being cutthroat above all else. This attitude starts at the top with Dana White, a genuine megalomaniac who views pain as weakness, and permeates through the fighters who fear being cut from the roster at any sign of failure.
But Paddy knows that he’s already a star, that he’s not going anywhere, and already has the power to say what he wants to say.
The second reason that I believe Paddy has the ability to become a marquee star in MMA is the marketing machines behind him. The UFC, for all of its foibles, is a very good marketing machine.
It’s a bit like ESPN in that the UFC is the big brand that hangs over everything but underneath it, smaller stars can flourish and build. But the other marketing machine, and the one that I believe can truly launch him, is Barstool Sports.
Barstool builds stars on the internet in an unparalleled way, even in spite of myriad issues. And Barstool is right behind Paddy.
(Photo by Julian Finney/Getty Images)
Both Paddy and Molly McCann are signed to Barstool Sports and Dave Portnoy, the founder of Barstool, was sitting cage-side for the fight wearing a shaggy blonde Pimblett wig. After winning, both immediately jumped the cage and leapt into Portnoy’s arms.
Portnoy and Barstool are star-makers and all of the heaviest hitters at Barstool are loudly behind Pimblett on social media. What Barstool does better than anyone is make non-events feel like life and death.
Look at the size of Big Cat’s run as Coach Duggs during the 2020 lockdowns, where he was just playing NCAA 2014 on Xbox and yet hundreds of thousands were watching him do it. Pimblett is a UFC fighter and what he does really matters.
They also have a significant financial investment in Pimblett so they are incentivised to build him up into a star outside of the tight confines of the UFC and the cold embrace of Dana White.
This investment also frees up Pimblett to speak a bit more freely than other UFC fighters with far less capital behind them. Pimblett knows that he is not solely reliant on the UFC to butter his bread and there is nothing that fight fans love more than a Maverick.
Paddy can be that.
I know that I am somehow both early and late on this call. Pimblett has not even headlined a fight night, let alone appeared on a UFC pay-per-view.
Despite that, nothing that I have written is an especially new or original thought and has been written about Pimblett. But I do not think that many have said that he has the potential stardom that I think may be coming to him.
His brand is different to McGregor’s despite efforts to compare the two. Other than coming from a roughly similar dreary and overcast part of the world and speaking in an accent, they are different people who charted different courses.
But I do think that he could vault himself to relatively similar levels of stardom if, of course, he keeps winning. Smarter MMA minds than mine view him as a good but not spotless prospect who is just okay on the feet but excellent on the ground.
Maybe he will get sparked the first time he steps in with a top-10 opponent and that will stop the train dead in its tracks.
But his personality is such that I think he could become as big of a star as anyone even without a belt or a truly extraordinary resume – perhaps closer to Jorge Masvidal or Nate Diaz than Conor McGregor.
A superstar nonetheless.
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