Pimblett says he expects a call from UFC with an offer to fight before the end of the year, but he still has his eye on UFC Paris headliner Renato Moicano
Chicken wing eating champion Paddy Pimblett is teasing a return to action by the end of 2024, and he’s back in the gym working off some extra weight just in case he gets a call from the UFC.
Pimblett has fought just once in 2024, but it was a very impressive performance: a first round submission win over King Green, who was a 2-1 favorite coming into their Manchester scrap in July. That put him into the rankings at No. 15, and now he hopes to edge up into the top ten with a win over Renato Moicano, who fights Benoit Saint-Denis this weekend at UFC Paris.
“I think I’m going to get asked to fight again by the end of the year,” Pimblett revealed in a new YouTube video. “But we’ll see what happens. I could have other things that I need to do. We need to see how my boy Renato gets on, don’t we?”
Both Pimblett and Moicano have been talking up the idea of an Ultimate Fighter season together, and filming for a new season of TUF is expected to start in February or March. We would be surprised if UFC passed on a Paddy season with a U.K. theme, especially given the lack of other options that might move the needle for the anemic show. We just hope they give him another fight before The Ultimate Fighter shelves him until fall 2025.
For now, Pimblett is in the gym staying relatively fit for whatever may come. Typically, Paddy gets fatty between fights with his famous 10k calorie binges but this time he’s staying under 200 pounds, which may be a shocking claim given how he looks.
“When I put a bit of weight on people make so much of a bigger deal out of it,” Pimblett said. “And it’s just because of my cheeks. Me cheeks go massive. I’m about 195 pounds, something like that. I don’t think that’s that heavy, personally. Other people might, where they don’t understand weight cuts and that. But I reckon most MMA fighters, especially UFC fighters, would say ‘Yeah, that’s about normal.’”
“People need to stop making a big deal about it,” he concluded. “Just because I have cheeks like Chris Griffin doesn’t mean I am Chris Griffin.”