Paddy Pimblett has nicknamed his rival Ilia Topuria "hand sanitiser boy" after the pair's run-in before UFC London.
UFC star Pimblett and featherweight prospect Topuria are both in the capital for their respective fights this Saturday. The pair, who previously clashed on social media, had a brief altercation at a fighter hotel on Tuesday.
Punches and a hand sanitiser bottle were thrown before the pair were dragged apart. Topuria said his rival "s*** his pants" during the scuffle whilst Pimblett labelled the Georgian's team as a "gang of b****es".
Their rivalry stems back to a now-deleted tweet in which Topuria was offended by Pimblett's comments about his native country. After their scuffle, the Liverpudlian has refused to address 'El Matador' by his name.
"Hand sanitiser boy? That's his name from now on, don't refer to him as his name," Pimblett said. 'His name's hand sanitiser, because it got bounced off his head. He wanted to come at me to try and act hard and he got put in his place.
"I was standing there on my own and there was about six of them, he done nothing. If he wanted to do something he would have come around the table and tried to have a fight with me, but he didn't because he knows what's good for him."
"As soon as he come out of them double doors, he snared me so I looked at him and said 'what'. As he got close to me, he swiped a slap at me. If you raise your hand to me, I'm gonna do something. So I bounced the hand sanitiser off his head."
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Pimblett downplayed any chance of a future fight with Topuria, who competes at 155lb on Saturday, in the future and thinks the Georgian will be knocked out by fellow Brit Jai Herbert.
'The Baddy' faces Mexican Rodrigo Vargas in his second UFC appearance on the London card. Pimblett, who made his promotional debut last September, explained why he didn't want to throw a punch during his run-in with Topuria.
"He's just got a bit of small man syndrome, he's only 5'7" isn't he. So we'll just try leave the little men to it. I can't let something like that happen, start throwing punches break my hand or get cut off the card. Especially on someone so meaningless.
"Who even is he? Seriously, who is Mr 'Hand Sanitiser'. He's a no-one, he used my name for followers and to gain some publicity. He put a video up and made himself look like a right tool."
