Ilia Topuria reacts to Paddy Pimblett’s win, saying that the judges gave Paddy a “Christmas gift”.
Backstage cameras caught Ilia Topuria, fresh off of his dominant win over Bryce Mitchell, watching on as Bruce Buffer read out the judges’ scorecard in favour of Paddy Pimblett. Topuria, like his coaches, had a good laugh at the result as it seemed as if Jared Gordon had done more than enough to upset Pimblett.
Take a look at Ilia Topuria’s live reaction:
La réaction de Ilia Topuria à la victoire de Paddy Pimblett
#UFC282 pic.twitter.com/qB7kJEkveS
— ARENA (@MMArena_) December 11, 2022
Ilia Topuria believes that Jared Gordon won “all three rounds” against Pimblett
The Paddy Pimblett decision win over Jared Gordon has caused a lot of controversy. Many believe that Gordon was robbed at UFC 282 and some, like Ariel Helwani, have even called out the judges involved in the matter.
Ilia Topuria is also someone who believes that Gordon was wronged this past weekend as he gave his thoughts on the fight in the post-fight press conference.
“They gave him [Pimblett] a Christmas gift right now because he clearly lost the fight,” Ilia Topuria said. “I don’t think anyone would disagree with me in this room.”
And Topuria would be right with his statement as essentially every single media outlet had Gordon winning that night. Ilia Topuria would add that he didn’t even think the fight was close as he had Gordon up all 3 rounds.
“Jared won all three rounds. He [Pimblett] didn’t win any round,” Topuria said. “But anyways, f**k him.”
Of course, Ilia Topuria and Paddy Pimblett have had quite the back-and-forth that goes as far back as the UFC Fight Night: Volkov vs. Aspinall card in March 2022, where the two almost came to blows backstage. Since then, Ilia Topuria has made it clear that he wants to see Pimblett inside the octagon and has even claimed that Pimblett is being protected by the UFC from him.
The two once again got into it at the pre-fight press conference for UFC 282, where things took an ugly turn as Pimblett used some borderline racial terms against Topuria.
So, there is plenty of bad blood between the two rising contenders if the UFC ever wished to match them up in the future.