Paddy Pimblett is fast becoming one of the most recognisable faces in the UFC following his electric start to his career as part of the franchise.
He has back-to-back performances of the night ahead of his UFC London fight against Jordan Leavitt tonight at the O2 Arena. He has won via stoppage twice since his UFC debut last September, firstly he beat Luigi Vendramini via KO before his win against Rodrigo Vargas by sub mission, both performances were lauded as the 27-year-old impressed.
One admirer Pimblett earned after his last fight was Virgil van Dijk, with the Liverpool centre-back praising the lightweight fighter for his performance. The Dutch defender tweeted: "Go on lad @theufcbaddy," with a red circle emoji to show Pimblett's support of the Reds.
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He also received a message from Andy Robertson, who tweeted the star: "Love it @theufcbaddy", to which the fighter responded: Woke up in dream land here 2 of Liverpool’s back 4 tweeting me yes Andy lad.
Tonight, Pimblett comes up against Jordan Leavitt in a lightweight bout, with the American representing the toughest challenge of Pimblett's career to date. He will be hoping that he can extend his 2-0 record so far in the UFC and get ever closer to a championship fight in the future.
His role on the main card at UFC London shows the star quality that the scouser possesses and could indicate that the organisation plan to give the former Cage Warriors star a leading role in the future. After UFC London in March, President of the UFC, Dana White lauded Pimblett's star quality.
"This week I was getting tired of hearing: 'Wait until you see his walk-out. Wait until you see this and that'," White said "I want to see him fight. He needs to win, but he did, and he did spectacularly. When he was in trouble, he came back and turned the fight around and won.
"On my Instagram I posted the faceoffs yesterday from the heavyweight fight [Tom Aspinall-Alexander Volkov] - it did 120,000 views. Paddy's face-off did 1.3 million.
"This kid has got a ton of hype behind him, and tonight he showed everybody that he's the real deal."
