Between the last bell and the first chippy order, Paddy Pimblett transitions from being a UFC fighter to a Liverpool boy who genuinely enjoys eating. The change is not subtle. The 155-pound lightweight, who just spent weeks living on self-control and calorie restriction, is eating his way through Merseyside within days of weigh-in, acting like a man who has been informed that the world is ending and that the only remedy is a Coca-Cola and a full English.
Because Paddy Pimblett’s weight gain is so freely and joyfully acknowledged, it has become one of the more talked-about topics in the sport, not because it is scandalous. The majority of combat sports athletes uphold a meticulously maintained appearance of year-round slenderness. Pimblett is unconcerned. Following his exhausting five-round bout with Justin Gaethje at UFC 324, which he lost by unanimous decision, he uploaded a vlog showing off restaurants in Liverpool while sporting two fading black eyes and a growing waist. The headline said, “I Got Fat Again.”
People stop scrolling because of the numbers. Pimblett weighed 155 pounds, the lightweight limit, following the Gaethje fight. Over the next few weeks, his weight increased to about 210 pounds. A three-week all-inclusive vacation in the Maldives contributed significantly to that 55-pound gain. He stated, “I was drinking Coca-Cola all day long, and meals constantly,” on Demetrious Johnson’s podcast. He didn’t sound embarrassed. He sounded like a man recounting a vacation he truly relished.
There are two ways to look at this. A professional athlete competing at the top level of the sport should maintain higher physical standards during the off-season, according to the critical viewpoint. The alternative perspective, which appears to be the one that the majority of his fan base has come to, holds that Pimblett is just being truthful about something that many fighters do in private. He simply makes more milkshakes and does it louder.
The fact that it never seems to harm him competitively is what keeps the conversation engaging. Without seeming ironic, he refers to himself as the “GOAT of weight cutting,” and that assertion is true in a limited but genuine sense. He has never skipped weight in a professional fight. He manages to return to 155 by Friday, regardless of what the number is on Monday of fight week. It works, at least temporarily, but it requires a lot of water manipulation and a degree of physical strain that sports scientists would probably find concerning.
Three weeks after UFC 324, Pimblett was captured on camera weighing 86 kg. He appeared at ease and had a much fuller face than the man who had exchanged blows with Gaethje for 25 minutes. He mentioned that he had been “eating well.” In Pimblett’s vocabulary, that term encompasses a wide variety of activities. He allegedly consumed close to 11,000 calories in a single day following a UFC London victory in 2022.
This has a noteworthy cultural component. Pimblett has no experience with sports nutrition. He comes from a city that has a unique relationship with food, community, and self-expression—the Scouse culture. His statement that he can’t wait to gain weight again sounds less like rebellion and more like relief—the relief of someone who has been subjected to controlled deprivation for months and is now able to live without having his lunch dictated by a scale.
It is reasonable to wonder if this pattern will continue in the long run. The intense weight cycling that characterizes his career—between 35 and 55 pounds per camp—puts the body under significant physiological stress. The UFC has been gradually investigating the gray area that fighters in the lightweight division who rely significantly on rehydration advantages operate in. Pimblett is just the one creating YouTube videos about it; he is not the only one doing this.
At UFC 329, he takes on Benoit Saint Denis in his octagon comeback. On the day of weigh-in, he will weigh 155 pounds. It’s highly unlikely that he will have abs. And he’ll most likely return to a restaurant within a week if he wins. That has a peculiar consistency to it.
