Paddy Pimblett has a theory about Ilia Topuria’s rise, and Paddy Pimblett is the main character in it. On a recent appearance with Jeremy Piven (yes, that Jeremy Piven, and MMA Mania’s Midnight Mania roundup was as baffled by the booking as I was), Pimblett again took credit for Topuria’s UFC title push. In his telling, the rivalry and the night he threw a hand sanitizer bottle at Topuria’s head lit the fuse, and everything after that was Topuria running downhill from it.
Then he gave us the detail that made the clip travel. He kept the bottle. “When I have a press conference with him, that will be coming with me,” Pimblett said, in footage Happy Punch posted to X on Oct. 29, 2026.
I’ll give him the bit. It’s genuinely funny, and as a piece of fight promotion it’s sharp. A grown man holding onto a sanitizer bottle like a museum artifact so he can plant it on a dais someday is the kind of prop that sells a press conference before anyone sits down. The credit claim is a different animal, and it doesn’t survive contact with how fighters actually get good.
Motivation is the cheapest ingredient in the gym
Every fighter on the roster has somebody they’d like to hurt. Grudges are free. If a heated rivalry were enough to send a man toward a belt, half the undercard would be wearing gold, because half the undercard has a guy they can’t stand. Anger gets you out of bed for a 6 a.m. run. It does not teach you where to put your lead foot against a southpaw, and it does not fix a sloppy entry on a double leg.
What builds a title push is boring and specific. Rounds in camp. Film. A coach who sees you dropping your right hand after the jab and makes you do it 300 more times until you stop. A fighter who comes back to the stool after Round 1, hears what went wrong, and walks out in Round 2 doing something different. That last part is my favorite thing in this sport, and no sanitizer bottle has ever coached it.
Topuria earned his push inside the Octagon, where Pimblett wasn’t. Whatever got him there was drilled in a room, by him and his team, long before any opponent stood across from him. You can argue the feud raised his profile. Attention is real, and attention moves a fighter up the conversation. But a profile doesn’t win exchanges. The guy throwing the punches does.
Why Pimblett keeps telling this story
Here’s where I’ll defend the man a little. Taking credit for an opponent’s success is an old promotional move, and a smart one. If Pimblett is the reason Topuria is chasing a belt, then any eventual fight between them becomes a story about Pimblett. He’s the origin. He’s the guy who started it. The bottle is Exhibit A. Notice that his quote assumes a future press conference with Topuria. He’s selling a fight that isn’t booked, and he’s casting himself as the reason it matters.
The trouble is the logic cuts against him if you follow it to the end. If Pimblett genuinely believes he forged the version of Topuria now climbing toward a title, then he’s admitting he built the most dangerous possible opponent for himself. That’s a strange flex. Claiming you made a guy into a contender plays great on a podcast and terribly in the cage, where the man you supposedly made is trying to take your head off.
There’s also the small issue of who gets to write this history. Pimblett’s account is the only one in this clip. Topuria didn’t appear on the Piven show co-signing the idea that a thrown bottle was the turning point of his career, and I’d bet a lot of money he’d describe his rise without mentioning Paddy at all. Fighters remember who helped them. They tend to leave out the guy who chucked toiletries at them.
The verdict
Pimblett is wrong about the cause and right about the marketing. The rivalry gave both men something to talk about, and talking is part of the job now. The climb itself belongs to Topuria, his coaches and whatever hours he put in that nobody filmed.
If Pimblett wants credit for something, I’ll happily hand him this: he understood before almost anyone that a dumb little object with a story attached is worth more on a press conference table than a dozen rehearsed insults. That’s a real skill. It just isn’t the skill that wins title fights.
So bring the bottle, Paddy. Set it next to the microphones and let the cameras find it. As far as I’m concerned, it has a better case for a co-promoter credit than you have for a coaching one.
