Paddy Pimblett is doing his best to recover from a tough loss with a smile on his—still somewhat misshapen—face.
“The Baddy” fell short in his quest to claim an interim UFC title in the main event of UFC 324, where he lost a unanimous decision to Justin Gaethje in what was primarily a striking battle. Ahead of the matchup, Pimblett boasted Gaethje “won’t be physically the same” after their fight, but the opposite turned out to be true as Pimblett absorbed the majority of the damage.
The irony is not lost on Pimblett.
“The one thing that has made me laugh, though, I did say before the fight I want to make his face look different and for a couple of days he made my face look different,” Pimblett said in a video update on his YouTube channel. “I had big shiners. [Pimblett’s wife] Laura put a post up and all pages were saying, ‘Paddy Pimblett four days after his fight’ and that. That was the next day. That was at it’s worst.
“I had big, puffy eyes, but as you can see now, it’s a week later. There’s nothing wrong with me. The only thing what’s up with me is probably got a scratched cornea or something like that.”
Should Pimblett’s recovery go as expected, he’s targeting a summer return as he is eager to move on from his first UFC loss.
According to Pimblett, the most physically distressing part of the fight were the eye pokes Gaethje caught him with.
“Everyone thought my face was a mess,” Pimblett said. “Listen, I’m only a week out from the fight. My face is sound. Got a little bit of bruising. The only thing left wrong with me is my eyeballs. Fingernails scratching my eyeballs, but you know, we get on with it.”
“People are feeling sorry for me and this and that, but I’m great,” he added. “In our sport, you can’t win every fight. It’s one of them. You don’t lose, you learn, and I’ve learned a lot from that fight already. I haven’t watched it back yet. Still quite annoyed with myself and a lot of other things surrounding the fight.”
At the moment, the tentative plan is for Gaethje to move on to a title unification bout with Ilia Topuria, while Pimblett seeks an opponent to keep himself in the contender picture. However, Pimblett hopes UFC 324 wasn’t the last time he shares the cage with “The Highlight.”
“Congrats to Justin Gaethje,” Pimblett said. “I did say before the fight I want the best version of Justin Gaethje and that Justin Gaethje turned up. So hats off to him. I hope he wins the undisputed title off Ilia and hopefully we can run it back even though I don’t think he’s got too many fights left.
“Hopefully, we can run it back in the future because there’s a couple of things in that fight what pissed me off, but you know, we get on with it. It’s done now. There’s nothing we can do. There’s nothing we can go back and change. I just hope that in the future he can step up and have a rematch with me, but it’s one of them.”
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