Paul Rimmer thinks his star student, Paddy Pimblett, is a better fighter than UFC lightweight champion Ilia Topuria.
Pimblett faced off with Topuria (17-0 MMA, 9-0 UFC) immediately after “El Matador” knocked out Charles Oliveira (35-11 MMA, 23-11 UFC) to claim the lightweight title in Saturday’s UFC 317 headliner at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
Rimmer, head coach at Next Generation MMA in Liverpool, warns everyone not to underestimate Pimblett (23-3 MMA, 7-0 UFC) against Topuria.
“A bloody mess, that’s what he’s going to do (to Topuria),” Rimmer told Submission Radio of Pimblett. “He’s going to make his face a bloody mess. That’s what I know is going to happen.”
Pimblett is coming off an impressive finish of Michael Chandler at UFC 314. Rimmer says watching Oliveira face Chandler twice gave them a good gauge of what to expect, and they were able to gather even more info watching him against Topuria.
“The best thing for us is watching him fight more against lightweights,” Rimmer said. “Charles is a great one for us because he shows you kind of what not to do in a lot of fights. With the Chandler fight, we watched Charles fight Chandler, and then we used a load of stuff that Charles didn’t do in that fight that he should have done, and we used that to make up the victory in the last one. So, we just watched Charles fight Ilia now and there’s a lot of stuff you can see in the fight that you shouldn’t do against Ilia.
“So, like I say, we learn constantly. …Everyone thinks Ilia is this like unbeatable bogeyman in the division and that you should fear him and all that sort of stuff. But, Paddy’s also on a long win streak and I can tell you this right now, if you had to go and find a sparring partner that matches exactly what Paddy is and exactly what Ilia is, I’d be able to find a better Ilia than I can a Paddy. I can tell you that right now.”
