Midnight Mania: Dr. Paddy Diagnoses King With CTE

Bringing you the weird and wild from the world of MMA each and every weeknight!

Welcome to Midnight Mania!

The federal government may have accepted Bobby Green’s name change, but his UFC 304 opponent Paddy Pimblett won’t follow suit. Pimblett doesn’t care that Green’s longtime moniker “King” is now his legal name. In fact, he thinks it’s a sign of mental decline following a couple bad knockout losses in recent years.

“No, his name is Bobby, lad,” Pimblett explained to MMA Junkie. “He was born Bobby, he was Christened Bobby, his mom and daddy call him Bobby. His name is Bobby. … The fact that he’s changed his name at nearly 40 years of age shows that CTE is real.”

He continued, “I do think it’s still affecting him because he got clipped with a few shots against Jim Miller, who’s not a big puncher … I think he’s a little bit chinny now. Not even just the Jalin Turner one, he got knocked out clean by Drew Dober as well a couple of months before that.”

The Dober knockout actually happened about a year prior to Green’s loss to Turner, but nobody can deny that the “Tarantula” dropped a hellish amount of damage on Green. It will be interesting to see if Pimblett tries to take advantage of Green’s potentially declined durability, however, because Green is historically rather difficult to drag to the floor.

UFC 304 is scheduled to go down in just a couple weeks on July 27 from Manchester, England, and the Lightweight contest is situated prominently on the main card. It’s an important fight for Pimblett, who will attempt to break into the 155-pound rankings by taking out No. 15-ranked Green and extending his UFC win streak to six. King, meanwhile, has won three of his last four bouts, most recently bloodying up Jim Miller in a decisive victory.

Insomnia

Alex Pereira used a bit of trickery to earn himself an addition $253k — a savvy veteran in every sense!

A kind of slap fight that I can get behind.

Conor McGregor has been chirping at Khabib consistently for years, but I can’t remember the last time the trash talk went the other direction.

Brendan Allen and Nassourdine Imavov are the two Middleweight prospects-turned-contenders that often seem overlooked, but the winner should be in title shot discussion.

Definitely watch Cory Sandhagen vs. Umar Nurmagomedov at whatever your correct local time is.

Sean O’Malley makes so many height-based jokes you would think he’s not a Bantamweight.

Touch-pull-return demonstrated by a master:

Slips, rips, and KO clips

Beautiful combination to finish the fight.

Monstrous physical strength on display in pretty much all of these wrestling exchanges.

Spinning to reset one’s stance after a kick is a known strategy, but I’ve never seen the spin off a shin-to-shin failed kick.

Random Land

May require multiple watches to understand …

Midnight Music: Alternative rock, 1989

Sleep well Maniacs! More martial arts madness is always on the way.