The UFC is in a very good, but very interesting spot with one of it's biggest draws. Paddy Pimblett is quickly becoming a huge star and money making machine for the promotion, even though he is only 3-0 since making his debut less than a year ago. Paddy has found the secret sauce required to become a huge star and someone the fans want to see before he has started competing in big fights and important matchups. This is a very unique situation that forces the UFC to be very careful with how they book him in his next few fights. They want to walk a fine line where the public feels like he is being legitimately tested, but at the same time, the UFC wants to keep him winning so that he has as much interest as possible. I want to get into this dynamic a little bit and discuss what all of the options really are. Hopefully that will help us come to a conclusion.
Before I really get into that part, I want to take a moment to discuss some of these comparisons that people are using to Paddy. The first two are Ian Garry and Muhammad Mokaev, which I'll group together because I think the explanations are pretty similar. These aren't super popular names to get thrown around, so I won't waste too much time on them. I have seen some people saying that there's no one getting upset that Garry and Mokaev are getting low level opponents, but I think that makes more sense for their situations. Mokaev is about to turn 22 and Garry is 24. They are both fighters who are so young and have several years to go before they even get to their prime. On average, I think the prime of an athlete is from 27-32, which places Paddy right at the beginning of his prime years. Seeing Paddy have competitive minutes and rounds with fighters in the bottom quarter of the roster at 27, while Mokaev and Garry are winning those same level of fights being years away from their primes are just different situations. Mokaev flattening Cody Durden inside the first half of his first round in the UFC at 21 shows incredible potential. Paddy almost getting knocked out by Luigi Vendramini before finding his own knockout isn't quite the same. I ultimately think Mokaev and Garry just show a much higher potential. Mokaev is already an extremely high level wrestler, who could probably compete strictly in the grappling with most fighters in his division. Garry has also shown himself to be extremely talented and a technical striker beyond his years. He's shown power and that he can snipe his opponents from range, while being moderately well rounded. Paddy has shown flashes of having those kinds of abilities, but has also had fights where he just hasn't look all that great. Every round that Paddy has fought in the UFC has seen his opponent have success against him. Mokaev has yet to even come close to losing a round in the UFC and Garry was probably losing the first 3-4 minutes of the round against Jordan Williams in his debut, but then knocked him out and hasn't lost a round since. Seeing that kind of skill and progression at their age and comparing it to seeing more static development from Paddy isn't the same to me. I also kind of think Gabe Green is a better fighter than anyone Paddy has fought. While I do sort of get why people like to compare them, I think it kind of misses the mark. Paddy is not only older, but much more experienced than either Mokaev or Garry at an age where he should have a much easier time with the guys he is fighting. I think this misses the mark for that reason, but also because of why they get the hype. Largely, I think Mokaev and Garry get the hype that they do because people see them as having the potential to one day compete for a title or at least fight title eliminator type of fights. A lot of Paddy's hype has been centered around his popularity and his ability to connect with the fans, while his actual fighting style is secondary to that. I talked a lot more about that than I thought I would.
The second comparison that people love to throw out there is Conor McGregor and I think that also wildly misses the mark. Again, I do see why people want to jump to this because they're wildly popular fighters from Europe, but I think a vast majority of the comparisons end there. Paddy has the fan hype before getting to the UFC like Conor did, but I think you have to consider why that is the case. Paddy's hype has come because people like him as an individual and think he is very entertaining, which I don't disagree with. The difference is that while Conor did have some of that from his trash talking, he also got a lot of his popularity in the US because he was smashing his opponents. I really don't think I fall into the Conor dick-rider group, but we have to be honest with ourselves here. When Paddy was being clipped and taken down by Kazula Vargas, Conor was beating Max Holloway. Conor's 4th UFC fight was against Dustin Poirier. Now, Max and Dustin weren't then what we know them to be today, but those fighters they would become were still in there somewhere. I don't think we're going to be looking up in 6 years and seeing Luigi Vendramini, Kazula Vargas, or Jordan Leavitt inside the top 5 of a division. Within 2 and a half years of entering the UFC, Conor had knocked out Poirier, Chad Mendes, and Jose Aldo. Just to put that in perspective, that would mean Paddy Pimblett would have to finish the likes of Michael Chandler and Islam Makhachev by the end of 2023. I don't think anyone is predicting that. While a lot of Conor's hype from Ireland came from people generally liking him, a lot of his US hype came from how good people thought he was and his actual performances. Obviously the English fans are all behind Paddy, as they should be, but I think a lot of US fans have more questions than answers with respect to Paddy. I think most of us think that he is fun and entertaining, but as a fighter, we have a lot of questions.
The final comparison is the one that I think comes the closest. That, of course, is Sean O'Malley. A lot of people like to group them together as fighters who get a lot of hype despite not fighting competition that is all that special or interesting. While that very basic view of things is true, I think it is off just slightly. A lot of people who don't like O'Malley were upset that he was such a draw and was getting so much attention while not fighting a high level of competition. However, I don't think anyone is really all that upset about Paddy's fame even though he is fighting guys in the bottom quarter of the division right now. Maybe Paddy just doesn't have enough fights against those kinds of opponents yet and if he were to get to 4-0 or 5-0 while still fighting the same types of guys, people would become a little more annoyed. I think the real difference though is that they felt like O'Malley was levels above his opponents, which he largely was. O'Malley was a top 15 bantamweight who was fighting guys on the fringe of the top 25 for far too long and it just started to become too much. People got annoyed because they wanted to find out how good he actually was and having him fight opponents who just had nothing to offer him wasn't adding to the intrigue. People, including myself, were excited to see him fight Pedro Munhoz because we felt like we were going to actually find something out about Sean. He fought basically even with Munhoz over a round and a half or so (I thought Pedro won the first and O'Malley was on his way to winning the second) and that was a development. We were seeing that Sean could at least compete (whether he would've won or not is a different story) with the top 10 of the division. Now we're getting Sean against the former champion in Petr Yan and while Yan should be a pretty nice sized favorite, I think Sean will compete with him. With Paddy, I don't think anyone is too annoyed that he is as big of a star as he is while fighting the competition he is because he largely seems to be fighting the requisite level of opponent. He's found early finishes against all 3 of them so far, but he was put in bad spots before then. He was hurt by Vendramini, hurt and taken down by Vargas, and taken down and controlled some by Leavitt. I think this is probably an indication that Paddy is fighting guys who are relatively on his level. He's winning these fights, so maybe he could move up a tier of fighter now, but I think too big of a jump would put him in a tough spot. I think this is why Paddy largely avoids the O'Malley criticism because he isn't just beating up lesser fighters.
That brings us into who or what type of opponent we should be looking at for Paddy. The way that I'm seeing these things discussed is in three different camps. There's the "lets keep giving him low level fights to continue to win" group, the "lets give him someone in the next tier of fighter" group, and the "lets really give him a push" group. Let's get into those in a little more detail.
I'm going to start with the "big push" group because I think this is the smallest group of people and probably the worst idea of the three. I've heard some people here and there suggesting that Paddy should get a ranked opponent or someone close to the rankings next and I think that is completely ridiculous for a couple of reasons. The first is that Paddy isn't anywhere near ready for that level. He's fighting competitive rounds with Jordan Leavitt. On the MMA Hour, I think New York Ric threw out the name Dan Hooker and Ariel mentioned that he heard some people talking about Tony Ferguson. I cannot stress how bad of an idea that would be. Tony Ferguson fought a competitive first round with Michael Chandler before being knocked out and now people think Paddy can beat him? That's just absurd to me. Dan Hooker hasn't looked his best of late either, but losing to Dustin Poirier, Michael Chandler, Islam Makhachev, and Arnold Allen is not the same as losing to Paddy Pimblett and frankly it isn't even close. I find it hard to believe that even Paddy's biggest fans think he is ready for that type of fight. I think the argument here is that you get to see what you have in a fight that would be a pretty big deal. Paddy vs Tony would probably draw enough fans to justify it being a PPV co-main event if they really wanted it to. If Paddy wins, then that is obviously huge and now they can start putting him in massive fights and I don't doubt that they envision a dream fight against Conor McGregor at some point. I think the downside in terms of his overall stock is probably a bit limited. If he loses to Tony, they can just say that he lost to a former interim champion and it was just too much too fast. I don't think the PR risk is as great as to what could potentially happen to Paddy in those fights. Quite honestly, I think he would get beat up really badly and the visual of that would probably be a lot worse than just the L on his record. Overall, I don't think Paddy is ready for that level of competition and neither do most others. Even if they tried to give him the best style matchup possible, I don't think he is on the level of ranked fighters or really all that close to it.
The first option that should actually be considered letting Paddy continue to fight these bottom third of the roster type of fighters. For me, this would include fighters like Natan Levy, Steve Garcia, Mike Breeden, and Slava Borshchev. Part of me thinks these types of fighters are the most likely opponent next for Paddy, but would also be the most disappointing. Again, this is the tier of fighter that Paddy has kind of shown himself to be, but doesn't really lend itself to remaining a star. He's a star now, but if he continues to just fight guys like this, that will begin to lose some of it's shine pretty quickly. Paddy can fight high on cards in London fighting these types of fights because he is the popular hometown guy. However, I kind of don't think he can be a co-main event of a random Fight Night in Portland with this type of fight. Paddy is interesting and fun, but I don't think that will be enough to carry him to the top of non-UK based cards for much longer. If this is the kind of opponent that they want to try and give him for as long as possible, I think he fills in Sean O'Malley's old role of being the opening fight of the PPV main card. Paddy is interesting enough to generate some actual buzz for a card against these low level opponents as long as he's not the actual selling point of the card itself. I think the real question is can Paddy co-main a PPV if it was Conor's return against maybe Michael Chandler or Tony Ferguson? I think he could interest wise, but I just don't know that people are really looking to pay $79 or whatever it is now to see Paddy vs Natan Levy as the co-main of a PPV, no matter how much people like him. This is sort of a weird situation because Paddy is too big of a draw to have on the prelims, but he's not fighting the types of fighters to get huge spots. He can't main event a Fight Night because for him to be the main against a Mike Breeden type, what does the rest of that card look like? Is he a big enough draw to fight someone that most fans don't know on a card that isn't in the UK? I think so, but I'm not 100% sure he can do that long term. Maybe one more or two at most before I think his novelty wears off and people want to see him fight some more established competition. The positives of this option are that you should be able to continue to get Paddy wins, assuming he is fully healthy and training as hard as he can. The negative is that his opponent won't really draw all that much additional interest and in today's world, I think the fans are as informed as they've ever been and they know what the promotion is doing. I think people would start to lose interest in this pretty quickly, possibly as soon as this fight.
The middle option is to start moving him into the middle third of the division, which he has probably earned. After 3 wins in the lower third, I think he is at the point where those middle third type of fights can and should be considered for someone at 27 years old. I think fights in this tier could be Ludovit Klein, Rafa Garcia, or Matt Frevola on the lower end. I think the higher end of that range is Jamie Mullarkey, Jim Miller, and Jared Gordon. The middle of that range is probably Joe Solecki, Claudio Puelles, and Clay Guida. If Paddy were just some random fighter from cage warriors that was just another prospect coming over to the UFC who was 3-0, this is probably the type of fight that he would be getting. Because Paddy is such a star, I think this is the most dangerous level of fight to give him. I think these fights would really push Paddy and we would get to see the kind of fighter that he truly is. On the other hand, he probably shouldn't be favored against most guys in this range and there is the risk that he loses to someone that most people view as "just another guy". When Paddy suffers his first UFC loss, that fighter is going to get a lot of publicity, so the UFC has to make sure it is the right guy. They can't have Paddy lose to someone his own age who is just an average UFC lightweight. That is sort of why I think Jim Miller is the way to go. If Paddy can beat him, that will notch a legitimately impressive name on his resume and should elevate his status. If Paddy loses, he takes a loss to the winningest fighter in UFC history who is significantly more experienced than he is. The drawback there is that is Jim Miller really going to do anything with all that traction he'll gain from that win? Probably not. Maybe that makes Claudio Puelles they guy. He's young enough that with all the notoriety he would get from beating Paddy, he could actually do something with it and they could try to market him further. The upside of these matchups are that you're giving Paddy real tests and names that, should he win, would legitimately impressive someone like me who sort of has some questions about how far he can go. The downside is that if he loses, it has a good chance of being to someone who won't be able to do anything with that momentum. So many of the fighters in this tier (not anyone specific that I listed necessarily) are here for a reason. They're legitimate UFC fighters and have risen above that lower third, but there is something holding them back from being in the upper third. They would have to carefully choose someone in this tier that is also on the rise that they believe could one day end up in the rankings and competing for titles. However, doing that seems to be stacking the odds against Paddy and making it more likely for him to lose, which they also don't want.
At the end of the day, I think putting Paddy on the MSG card in November is the right move. I am interested to see how much the fan base actually cares about him outside of the UK. I think if they were to put him on that card, they would likely do it in a matchup that they thought he could win. Whether that is Natan Levy or Slava Borshchev or someone else is hard to say, but I do think that is the route they end up taking. I would really like to see him fight someone like Jim Miller or Claudio Puelles because those guys I think are legitimate challenges for Paddy that would be interesting fights. I would be genuinely excited to watch those matchups. I just don't really think the UFC is looking to take the risk with Paddy yet. They'll want to milk every last dollar they can out of him and won't give him a step up until either he is demanding it or the fans start to show diminished interest.
What do you guys think? What type of fight do you want to see Paddy get next? Do you have a specific matchup that you would like to see for him? Leave any and all thoughts below. Thanks for reading and have a good one.
Comments
Post a Comment