Despite having made only two appearances in the UFC, Pimblett already cemented himself as one of the biggest stars in the sport.
The Scouser is fresh off of his first-round submission over Rodrigo Vargas in UFC London.
But Pimblett is becoming just as famous due to the controversies he gets into outside of the octagon.
Following his victory, Pimblett proceeded to call out Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The unimaginable callout happened days after Pimblett’s Instagram got taken down by the Social Media giant (and a couple days after it was restored).
“Who do I want to fight? Mark Zuckerberg,” he said at the post-fight interview.
“Lad I’m going to punch your head him. I’m sick of you lad, you know what I mean.”
“I’m sick of you shutting my Instagram accounts down when all I do is help charities and help people with mental health problems. You’re the biggest bully in the world lad.”
According to Pimblett, the Instagram ban came after he started engaging trolls who were posting derogatory comments directed at a kid who suffered from cancer.
Pimblett posted a picture of himself accompanied by a child who was visibly suffering from the effects of his disease. When one of the Instagram commenters decided to make fun of the kid, that did not sit well with the UFC star.
“He’s got a brain tumor, cancer. He’s got all sorts of things wrong with him and he’s three years old,” Pimblett said at the UFC London pre-fight press conference.
“He’s got no hair because of all the chemotherapy and some absolutely disgusting piece of sh*t commented something horrible about him.”
“I’ve got morals… I reported the comment and I got it with a notification back twenty minutes later, ‘This comment does not go against our community guidelines so we will not remove it’. ”
“then I called him a piece of s**t. I said ‘You dirty piece of s**t. You are a piece of vermin on my shoe’ and the next day my account was disabled.”
Sadly, not all of Pimblett’s Social Media interactions happen to be this wholesome. On Twitter, Pimblett posted a fair share of questionable comments that lead to twitter terminating his account earlier this year.
In 2018, Pimblett got into an altercation with fellow UFC prospect Muhammad Mokaev.
After his mother passed away, Mokaev’s family fled to England when he was 8 years old. Since then, Mokaev took on wrestling as a sport and managed to win 6 British Wrestling championships. Today, Mokaev proudly represents the English flag at the biggest MMA stage in the world.
But, according to Pimblett, Mokaev is a “fraud” for sporting his country’s flags.
“No u[sic] wear that flag as a fraud. Ur [you are] not from here u [sic] idiot.” Pimblett comments Mokaev.
When Mokaev presented the fact that Pimblett was being racist, Pimblett responded:
“How am I racist? Was[sic] u born here? Nope, then u shudnt[sic] represent this country.”
Pimblett has repeatedly shared his discontent with immigrants living in his home country. In several tweets, he stated that some of the reasons for England’s problems are due to the number of foreign people living in the queen’s country.
“This county [country] is a f***ing mess because of the government lad, simple as that,” Paddy writes in a past tweet.
“lots of immigrants have landed in this country an[sic] took over full areas, some places don’t even speak English [and you are] telling me that’s good for this country?”
In another instance, the fighter retweeted a very angry tweet about a refugee who was complaining about having to live with a large family inside a shipping container provided by the government.
Ahead of UFC London, Pimblett got into a physical altercation with Georgian Lightweight Ilia Topuria, who was set to be featured on the same card. Topuria started the confrontation because of comments Pimblett made in the past about his home country.
In a now-deleted tweet from 2021, Paddy wrote:
The comment is a clear nod to the Russo-Georgian War that happened in 2008. Much like today’s Ukraine, Georgia was in an armed conflict with Russia, which resulted in thousands of Georgian lives lost.
While Paddy “The Baddy” would like to have us believe that he’s calling out a social media CEO on top of a moral high horse, the stark reality is that Pimblett currently likely makes more from his lucrative contract with Barstool sports than he makes in the UFC – and that’s something he inadvertently confirmed himself.
As such, being banned from different social media platforms would have a significant effect on his revenue. Here at calfkicker.com we support freedom of speech, but we’re also willing to provide a nuanced take on a seemingly ‘moral’ call out.