King Green believes Paddy Pimblett is getting preferential treatment from UFC.
This Saturday, Green and Pimblett face off in the featured main card fight of UFC 304. The fight is Pimblett’s opportunity to crack into the UFC’s lightweight top 15, and as it draws near, tensions have escalated between the two. That trend continued Wednesday as Green went off on Pimblett during UFC 304 media day, calling “The Baddy” a spoiled kid who has not earned the things he’s being given by UFC.
“The thing is, the kid was getting a little too brash,” Green said. “I’m a humble guy. I believe in being humble. For some reason, he keeps calling me the cocky guy. He’s the cocky f*cker. To me, it’s like, I’ve earned my spot. I’ve been here for so long. I think I’m here 12 years now, fighting. And not just 12 years where I fight once a year and then I hang out and come back the next year and fight. No, consistently doing four, five fights a year. So for me, it’s a little bit different, where I’ve earned my spot.
“That guy was running his mouth and doing all this barking and I’m like, ‘Who is that guy?’ ... He just started acting like he was the big shit. The problem for me, I call him the spoiled kid. Spoiled kid. Certain kids that don’t know that you got the whole house, everything’s been built around you. And I think for me, it goes back to my days where I come from because I didn’t have a mom and dad. I saw those kids act like that in school, ‘Man, they don’t even know how they treat their mom and their dad. They’re spoiled.’ He acts the same way. He doesn’t realize the UFC is working with him, giving him every opportunity, building you. I had to earn it. They had to put me through the fire. I’ve been forged by fire. You, they built you. There’s a difference between us.”
A former Cage Warriors featherweight champion, Pimblett was one of the biggest MMA stars in the U.K. before he even joined UFC in 2021, and as such he entered the promotion to much fanfare. Pimblett has delivered on that promise with a 5-0 start to his UFC tenure, and The Baddy has only grown in confidence and braggadocio. But Green says that’s soon to come to an end.
“That’s what I’m saying, the spoiled kids versus the cool kids,” Green said. “The real ones. He don’t know that he’s getting the door opened and he gets to walk through it. All he has to do is shut up, smile, and he’s got the whole oyster. But somewhere in there, he got to start getting brash. I feel like once you start winning, you can get drunk off of it, where you start feeling yourself. He starts talking shit, like, yeah, somebody hasn’t popped that bubble yet. Nobody has burst your bubble and let you know that’s a false reality.”
Green is hardly the first to suggest Pimblett gets a soft hand by UFC, and not without reason. Most recently, Pimblett faced Tony Ferguson as UFC 296 despite Ferguson being on a six-fight losing streak heading into the bout, while Pimblett was on a four-fight UFC winning streak. And for this fight, Pimblett is receiving the very special treatment of getting custom fight shorts, an honor that has previously been bestowed primarily on champions or former champions. And that appears to be the straw that broke the camel’s back for Green.
“You know how to piss me off! That’s why I’m kicking his ass a little bit more,” Green said. “That’s what I’m talking about, the spoiled kids. I’ve worked so hard for this f*cking company, I’ve took so many fights on short notice, broken hand, this and that, threw the company on my back a thousand times. I fought a guy, had to come back and fight Islam [Makhachev] 10 days later!
“I’ve done the most for this f*cking company to get my shorts, but this guy just gets to come here, walk in and get them. It’s like, wow! That’s what I’m talking about, that spoiled shit. All he had to do was say, ‘Hey, I want my shorts!’ and they gave him his shorts. So now I’m going to kick his ass for that reason. I’m kicking his ass for that and that’s it. Let’s go.”
UFC 304 takes place Saturday at Co-op Live in Manchester, England.
