Paddy Pimblett is expected to make his Octagon return at some point over the next few months and recently teased a potential showdown against lightweight action fighter Michael Chandler, who is moving on from his Conor McGregor dream fight to reestablish his presence at 155 pounds.
“You might talk to a lot of people from a fight perspective that (think) Paddy might be more dangerous than Conor at this point,” Chandler told InstantCasino.com (via Newsweek). “We haven’t seen Conor in three years. Name-wise? Yeah, you’re not gonna get a bigger name than Conor, but when it comes to training for an opponent (like Paddy) it brings me back to the Bellator days.”
Chandler, 38, is in desperate need of a victory after dropping four of his last five. “Iron” wasted two years of his competitive prime chasing the McGregor fight — despite warnings from his fellow fighters that “Notorious” was going to leave him high and dry.
“I’m supposed to beat Paddy Pimblett in a lot of people’s eyes, so that wells up even more motivation in me,” Chandler continued. “He’s a young and hungry guy. He’s got his whole career ahead of him, whereas I’ve been doing this for 10 years longer than him, so I like it, man. Whether I’m a 1000-1 underdog or a 1000-1 favorite, I put in all the work necessary to be successful on fight night.”
Pimblett, 30, is undefeated under the UFC banner at 6-0. That includes his submission victory over Bobby Green as part of the UFC 304 event last summer in London. Hopefully “The Baddy” doesn’t bring any banana peels to his fight against “Iron.”
“I like the idea of fighting Paddy Pimblett and making a ton of money, and it being … I don’t want to say an easy fight, because I could go out there and slip on a banana peel and get knocked out in front of everybody, but let’s just say I like the fight stylistically,” Chandler said. “I like Paddy as a human. I think he’s one of the good ones. And with that being said, that does not stop me from wanting to separate him from consciousness.”
UFC has yet to comment on this potential slugfest.
