{"id":88222,"date":"2026-07-15T08:28:03","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T22:28:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/?p=88222"},"modified":"2026-07-15T08:28:03","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T22:28:03","slug":"the-sliding-doors-of-ufc-329","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/2026\/07\/the-sliding-doors-of-ufc-329\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sliding Doors of UFC 329\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Right as Conor McGregor leapt up to attempt to kick Max Holloway\u2019s head clean off, the first true potential successor to McGregor was being interviewed.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paddy Pimblett stopped his interview, barely sweating after dispatching ex French special forces soldier Benoit Saint-Denis inside a minute, and saw that McGregor was already done.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With a Logan Roy after Kendall killed the waiter level of ruthlessness and opportunism, Pimblett seized the moment. He said, shortly after registering a level of shock, \u201cwell he\u2019s finished! The new boy is in town! The main man\u2019s here!\u201d<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019s right. On both counts.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Firstly, McGregor truly is finished.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a rational world, this would have been the last time he could have made anyone believe that he is capable of doing anything inside that octagon. I nearly typed something to the effect that \u201cnobody will believe in him again\u201d, but then I remembered that people really thought 60-year-old Mike Tyson coming off a cardiac event might have some juice as a professional boxer.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

McGregor has had and fought through so many injuries in his professional fighting career, from torn ACLs to broken legs.<\/a> You mix that with the way that he\u2019s lived his life,  appearing to spend a good chunk of time speedrunning the last half hour of Scarface<\/em>, and you get a shot fighter.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He sold it like he always does, particularly at the press conference and in the face off but he couldn\u2019t do anything once it came to put up or shut up time. His muted walk to the cage, a far cry from the lunatic look he gave when the camera panned to him when he made the walk against Mendes, looked like a man who knew that he was doing McGregor cosplay.<\/a>  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019ll probably come back at some point for his last fight with the UFC, and will probably get on the influencer circuit or maybe fight Floyd Mayweather under TKO\u2019s Zuffa Boxing banner like the media wing of McGregor\u2019s PR operation has put out<\/a>, but make no mistake: Conor McGregor is finished as a proper fighter.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s been true for eight years, but now his fighting career has had a funeral.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Compare McGregor\u2019s muted walk to the cage with Pimblett\u2019s and you tell me who the star of the moment is.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even before Pimblett\u2019s music starts, a hyper parochial crowd chants \u201cOHHHH PADDY THE BADDY\u201d before a remix of Lethal Industry and Heads Will Roll starts. Then when it kicks in, Paddy does a modern day Manny Pacquiao with a big smile on his way to the ring, dancing like a guy who doesn\u2019t know how to dance but knows he\u2019s too good at fighting for anyone to tell him.<\/a>  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The whole crowd makes Paddy\u2019s hands going up and down moves as he moves through the screaming crowd, smiling gleefully while singing \u201cheads will roll\u201d as he enters the canvas.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This man is a star, almost of the same ilk as McGregor.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like McGregor, Pimblett is from a part of northwestern Europe that has been victimised by the British establishment. For McGregor, clearly, it was Ireland. For Pimblett, it\u2019s Liverpool.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So often stars in fighting come out of these working-class enclaves that have an intense pride of place, and for Pimblett it\u2019s no different. He retains his Scouse accent and is still upset at The Sun for its coverage of the Hillsborough disaster.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While there seems to be fewer Merseysiders traveling to Paddy\u2019s fights than Irishmen travelled to Conor\u2019s before the Irish began to hate him and his fans transitioned from Irishmen to the worst American blokes you\u2019ve ever met wearing green t shirts, that sense of place gives a starting point for his superstardom that many of the great stars have had from Muhammad Ali from Louisville to Mike Tyson from Brownsville to Bud Crawford from Omaha. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pimblett is also a brilliant talker with a great personality, whether he\u2019s reviewing the junk food that he eats between fights to 600k views to getting on the mic after a fight to sell the next one.<\/a>  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Outside of fighting, Pimblett has everything. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the cage, Pimblett is probably not at the level of prime McGregor but he\u2019s not far below. As we saw with his win over Saint-Denis, Pimblett is a wizard on the mats<\/a>. His jiu-jitsu is among the best at lightweight. He is so gifted at snatching a neck when it\u2019s open to him and clinging on as the fight drains out of his opponent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where he somewhat struggles is that he likes to get into firefights and use his striking, which is good but not great. The striking battle that he had with Justin Gaethje, which he lost and was a sloppy fight, franked his \u201ctough guy\u201d credits as he made his way through a war and made true his longtime credo that scousers don\u2019t get knocked out.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That loss, paradoxically, sets up a true star-making fight for Pimblett.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Four years ago ahead of UFC London, Paddy Pimblett and Ilia Topuria got into a fight at a hotel and started throwing hand sanitiser at each other.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, years later, both are near the top of the lightweight division, both have recent losses to the current champion Justin Gaethje, and both are vying for the title of the biggest star in the UFC to take the company forward. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In order to make the next true star in the UFC, that fight as a title eliminator is the one to make provided Topuria\u2019s face can recover from being destroyed by Justin Gaethje.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The UFC has failed to make big fights in recent years from Makhachev v Topuria, to Jones v Ngannou, to Jones v Aspinall.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It cannot fail on making this fight. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since McGregor\u2019s run, while the UFC has been hot, it\u2019s struggled to find a star. As McGregor finally exits stage left, the UFC might have found one or two and they happen to be in the same division.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The UFC can finally fill the vacuum. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Right as Conor McGregor leapt up to attempt to kick Max Holloway\u2019s head clean off, the first true potential successor to McGregor was being interviewed.  Paddy Pimblett stopped his interview, barely sweating after dispatching ex French special forces soldier Benoit Saint-Denis inside a minute, and saw that McGregor was already done.   With a Logan Roy after Kendall killed the waiter level of ruthlessness and opportunism, Pimblett seized the moment. He said, shortly after registering a level of shock, \u201cwell he\u2019s finished! The new boy is in town! The main man\u2019s here!\u201d  He\u2019s right. On both counts.   Firstly, McGregor truly is finished.   In a rational…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":88223,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8298,463],"tags":[],"hub_post_cat":[],"class_list":["post-88222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guywholikessport","category-ufc"],"acf":{"md_tip_date":"","md_tip_date_end":"","md_market_url":"","tip_date":"15\/07\/2026","event_country":"Australia"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88222"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88224,"href":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88222\/revisions\/88224"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88222"},{"taxonomy":"hub_post_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hub_post_cat?post=88222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}