UFC 155-pound rising star, Paddy Pimblett, had beef with Oktagon MMA lightweight, Denis Frimpong. Instead of a protracted, back-and-forth spat on social media that went nowhere, both combatants agreed to meet at the gym and settle their dispute “like men.”
Pimblett choked Frimpong into submission.
“We both agreed, we don’t stop until someone’s unconscious,” Pimblett said on his YouTube channel. “Taps don’t count. Quitting to strikes doesn’t count. We just go until someone’s out cold. To be honest, I think he gave me the choke. He stuck his neck out to give me the choke because he didn’t want to get flattened out and ground-and-pounded until he was unconscious. I took the choke, and as we all know, if you get choked unconscious, you just wake back up.”
After the altercation, which eventually made its way online, Pimblett found himself in the crosshairs of couch critics complaining about his prolonged choke. That didn’t sit well with “The Baddy,” who insists Frimpong would have taken a few liberties of his own.
“A lot of people saying I’ve got no honor, I’ve got no this, I’ve got no that,” Pimblett said. “I’ve seen Denis say in an interview since, ‘If I would have knocked him unconscious, I would have jumped on him and landed a few more strikes.’ All is fair in love and war. I stood back up and went to the corner and just said, ‘Come ahead, let’s go again from the feet. You said you wanted to strike. Let’s go again from the feet.’ And Denis came over and said, ‘No, I’m done. I don’t want to go again.’ And then we shook hands like men. It’s done. We both agreed to never speak about it again. Simple as. End of.”
Pimblett, 30, has not competed since strangling Bobby Green as part of the UFC 304 pay-per-view (PPV) event last summer. No word yet on when or where “The Baddy” is expected to make his Octagon return, but an announcement is (hopefully) right around the corner.
