Paddy
Pimblett has put himself on quite the pedestal in terms of
fight IQ.
Pimblett scored the biggest win of his career so far by mauling
Michael
Chandler en route to a third-round TKO win at UFC
314 on Saturday. “The Baddy” believes he and his team’s game
plan had a big role to play in the way he decimated Chandler.
Pimblett considers his fight IQ to be comparable to Jon Jones, one
of the greatest to have ever graced the Octagon.
While many believed Chandler could knock Pimblett out, the
Liverpudlian also outstruck “Iron” on the feet. Pimblett said that
he is so confident about his grappling that he has been solely
focusing on his stand-up game for a while now.
“Me and my team, we got the best game planners that you can get.
We’ve got the best fight IQ,” Pimblett said in a post-fight interview with the UFC. “And the only other
person that I can compare to us with game plans as good as we do is
Jon
Jones. We do the best game plans, that’s why we come out and
demolish people. That’s why I’ve just come out and beat Chandler up
for three rounds before finishing him. I knew I had better striking
than him. People underestimate my striking only once. I’ve focused
on it so much over the past two years because I know me grappling
is light years ahead of everyone else’s… So I don’t really have to
grapple anymore, I just focus on striking.”
This was Pimblett’s fifth finish in seven straight UFC wins.
Currently, Pimblett considers himself just one victory away from a
title shot. However, it won’t be an easy task as Pimblett is
targeting Charles
Oliveira, Dustin
Poirier, Justin
Gaethje and Arman
Tsarukyan, who all belong to the Top 5.
“I personally think now I’m one fight away from the title. The
names that I just mentioned – If I beat Charles, Dustin, Justin,
even Arman [Tsarukyan] that little b—h a—. Beat any of them four
and I’m fighting for the belt after that.”