Video: Topuria Throws Punch At Pimblett In Host Hotel

Excluding Fight Island events, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) has officially hit the road for a Fight Night event for the first time since Mar. 14, 2020, when Kevin Lee and Charles Oliveira fought in Brazil. London, England gets the honors of welcoming back the promotion and some drama has already begun early into fight week.

Competing on the card will be one of the Lightweight division’s brightest prospects in former Cage Warriors champion, Paddy “The Baddy” Pimblett who takes on Rodrigo Vargas directly prior to the evening’s co-main event. Kicking off the night’s main card will be another Lightweight bout featuring Jai Herbert who faces Ilia Topuria — a top prospect in the 145-pound Featherweight class.

Despite not being booked to face one another, Topuria wanted to let the brash Englishman know he hadn’t taken too kindly to some past comments and confronted him in the host hotel. Topuria shared the video online and in typical Pimblett fashion, a response came in a timely fashion.

“Imagine trying to jump someone on their own with 5 of your boys & you dont land a single shot & get a bottle of hand sanitizer bounced off your head,” Pimblett quote tweeted in response to Topuria. “you little [clown and mushroom emoji] don’t try to act big like you did something when you [poop emoji] your pants pretending ur boys was holding u back. pussy”

The 27-year-old Pimblett debuted in the Octagon in Sept. 2021 with a first-round TKO of Luigi Vendramini (watch highlights). Overcoming some early adversity, the performance was nice enough to earn the star in the making a $50,000 bonus.

As for Topuria, the Halle Westfalen, Germany native has been perfect thus far in his career at 11-0 with his last three wins coming in the UFC. Topuria’s last win was undeniably his biggest as he knocked out feared submission grappler Ryan Hall in the first round of their UFC 264 clash (watch highlights).