The Problem with Paddy The Baddy
My issue isn't his personality; it's just the excessive exposure
Although he is only two fights into his UFC career, I already have fatigue on Paddy “The Baddy” Pimblett. It’s not like he’s ever the main focus of anything that comes into my purview, but he’s always popping up briefly for people to talk about him, and quite frankly he isn’t that interesting. More importantly, he’s not that great of a fighter.
On the interesting part, he is your basic MMA fighter. His viewpoints are problematic, but there are some positives where people can justify supporting him. He does seem to be sympathetic to people with mental health issues which is a good, and often overlooked, area. He also helps out with underprivileged children, so hey, he’s got two very nice things going for him.
But since he’s an MMA fighter, he has far more working against him. I mean, there are the small things like calling Mark Zuckerberg a lizard and an association with Barstool, but shit, if you’re screaming in defense of Mark Zuckerberg or still give a shit if an athlete is related to Barstool, I really can’t help you. I would say the real problem is the outward racism. He did say something very ignorant about Georgians (the country, not the state—the state would totally deserve it), but he apologized and recognized he was ignorant about their history with Russia. But there is still the outward racism that he is not apologetic for like remarking that if you weren’t born here, you shouldn’t represent the country. He also had the very dumb-guy complaint of, some places in England don’t speak English anymore. He’s a dumb MMA guy, but there’s a lot of those. Shit, Jared Cannonier might be the next Middleweight Champion, and he’s a full QAnon loon.
The problem I have with Paddy is that he just isn’t that good of a fighter.
He was only on a two-fight winning streak when getting signed by the UFC, and had only won 3 of his last 5 fights. One of those losses was to Soren Bak, a man who is 15-1 and got signed by Bellator where he is already 3-0. The other loss is less impressive but not bad as Nad Narimani used a decision win over Pimblett to a shot in the UFC where he is currently 2-2. And to be fair to Pimblett, 16-3 is nothing to scoff at, so it’s not like the guy isn’t deserving of being in the UFC.
He’s had a favorable schedule through his first two matches. His first fight was against Luigi Vedramini who rocked Pimblett before Paddy returned the favor and finished him in the first round. Vendramini was released after that loss dropped him to 1-3 in his UFC career. His last match being against Rodrigo Vargas, who again rocked him before getting tapped out, but may not have another fight in the UFC after falling to 1-3 in the octagon.
Next month, he’ll take a step up and take on Jordan Leavitt who is 3-1 in the UFC and 10-1 overall. It’s a definite step up in competition and actually a fight that makes sense. Is Pimblett favored? Yeah, heavily. Leavitt is not a world beater, but he can tie dudes up on the ground. It likely means that Pimblett won’t get rocked for a change, but he also might get tied up throughout the fight in Leavitt can outwrestle him. Still, this is a fight designed for Pimblett to make it to 3-0 in the octagon which will have people screaming about how he’s the future of the UFC.
So maybe Pimblett wins again, but it doesn’t change anything. Like most MMA fighters, he isn’t all that interesting, and the guy just doesn’t have the skills to become anything close to a UFC Champion.
He’s boring, and I’d way rather talk about someone more exciting, like Logan Storley.