UFC star Paddy 'The Baddy' Pimblett has backed Ronnie O'Sullivan to clinch his eighth World Championship at the Crucible this week, but says keep an eye on Northern Irish star Mark Allen as he continues his fine run of form.
The Belfast star has played some scintillating snooker so far this year and beat Judd Trump 10-9 to win the World Grand Prix earlier this year.
Allen and O'Sullivan are on opposite sides of the draw and could meet in the final in a match that would pit defending Champion O'Sullivan against the third ranked player in the world. Allen begins his quarter-final match against Jak Jones at 10am on Tuesday morning.
READ MORE: Mark Allen offers comical reason for using hand warmers during games
Despite Allen's brilliant form, Pimblett is still backing his good friend O'Sullivan to take home a historic 8th World title.
“Silly question lad," said Pimblett when asked who is going to win at the Crucible this year, "Ronnie’s going to win number 8."
But the Scouse star hasn't ruled out the 37-year-old Belfast potter, and revealed that The Rocket himself said to keep an eye on the Belfast native.
“Mark Allen, he’s on form this year. Like I said, I was talking to Ronnie the other day and he said Mark’s on form this year.
“So that’s what Ronnie says, because Ronnie never says himself ever. Ronnie always says someone else and he did say Allen."
'The Baddy' was at the Crucible over the weekend to watch O'Sullivan dismantle Hossein Vafaei in the round of 16. The build up between the match was fiery, with the Iranian cueist calling on the snooker legend to retire, and proclaimed that Ronnie was only nice in his sleep.
O'Sullivan went on to beat Vafaei 13-2 to march onto the quarter-finals, and Pimblett has opened up about The Rockets take on the situation.
"Ronnie didn’t trash talk him lad, it caught Ronnie off guard to be honest because Ronnie helped Hossein a couple of years ago when he got on the tour. Ronnie took him under his wing and looked after him.
“He didn’t see it coming, so when Hossein said all this about Ronnie he was like ‘where’s this come from?’ It was out of the blue so he had to teach him a snooker lesson."
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