Jared Gordon knows a thing or two about Paddy Pimblett, being the only man to arguably beat him in the UFC.
The judges stole that W from him back in 2022, and a lesser man would be upset that “The Baddy” has withdrawn his offer of a rematch to settle things. But Gordon — who faces Thiago Moises on May 17th at the UFC Apex — is surprisingly chill about the whole Paddy Pimblett thing.
“I like Paddy, man. How do you not like him?” Gordon told Inside Fighting. “The guy’s smart. He’s witty. He’s funny. His walkout’s amazing. And he’s winning. He’s the full package right now. I can see how he could look past me, but I knew that I was gonna give him a run for his money and beat him, which I did.”
Considering Gordon knew what it took for him to beat Pimblett, he had some interesting insight into how teammate Michael Chandler lost his fight to the Scouser at UFC 314.
Asked if he was surprised Chandler fell to Pimblett, Gordon replied, “No. Not at all.”
“I’m teammates with Mike, so I could just see how he was training,” he continued. “And I’m not trying to bad mouth him, and I always thought that he could beat him because he could catch him with one. But I saw the way he was training, who he was training with, and I was like, ‘I don’t think he’s gonna do it.’ Mike’s my buddy, but that’s just how I felt going into it.”
“Not going all out, not really training with guys that resemble Paddy that are gonna push him,” he said when asked what the issues were.
“I mean, I get it. He’s older in the fight game. He’s been in wars, so there’s only so much abuse that you should be taking in the gym. And he gets paid a boatload of money. So for him, it’s probably like just get to the fight, get paid no matter what, and hopefully I’ll win. That’s just what it seemed like to me.”
That’s how it’s looked like to a lot of people — that “Iron Mike” is more interested in making things entertaining than actually winning. And while he managed to turn his disastrous Charles Oliveira fight around in the final round to earn a moral victory, there was no silver lining to the ass whupping Paddy Pimblett put on him.
If he still intends to see us at the top, he’ll have to turn things around in his next fight and find the motivation to try and actually win.
