Paddy Pimblett is ready to go to war with Justin Gaethje.
Pimblett steps into the main event spotlight for the first time and meets ‘The Highlight’ in the UFC 324 headliner on January 24, with the winner leaving Las Vegas as the new interim lightweight world champion.
Looking ahead to their highly anticipated clash, Pimblett will be hoping to have the first knock-down drag-out brawl of his career – if the fight gets that far.
“I would love to have a fight with him. In all my years of fighting, including my amateur fights, 35 fights, I’ve never really had a war, so it would be nice to finally get one with the king of them,” Pimblett shared MMA junkie. “But I don’t think it’ll get to that point. I think I’ll finish him. Once we get down, he won’t get back up. I know he’s a really good scrambler, he’s a really good wrestler, but people underestimate my wrestling and underestimate my scrambling. People think I can’t wrestle, which makes me laugh.”
No one thought I was going to take Michael Chandler down and I dropped him on his head,” Pimblett continued. ‘We’ll see what happens. I don’t even plan on taking him down. I want to knock him out. I’m going to come out and strike with him. People call it a battle between grappler and striker, but it’s not.
“There’s a really big divide in the class when it comes to wrestling, but there’s not as big a divide in the class when it comes to striking. Everyone thinks he’s just going to take me apart. I’m going to show everyone the difference between a striker with boxing and leg kicks and an MMA striker because that’s what I am.”
Pimblett enters the bout with an impeccable 7-0 record under the UFC banner, including a decisive third-round TKO victory over Michael Chandler in his last outing.
Meanwhile, Gaethje has won three of his last four: a streak that includes two wins against Rafael Fiziev and a head kick KO against Dustin Poirier at UFC 291.
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