Paddy Pimblett never threw away the hand sanitizer bottle he launched at Ilia Topuria’s head. He kept it, and he has a use in mind.
On Jeremy Piven’s podcast, Pimblett said of a future face-to-face with Topuria: “When I have a press conference with him, that will be coming with me.” HappyPunch clipped the moment, and Spinnin Backfist jumped on it right away. “The scenes when Paddy Pimblett shows up to their press conference with the Stool and the hand sanitizer bottle,” the account wrote on X. The stool is Spinnin Backfist’s addition. In the clip as shared, Pimblett commits only to the bottle.
The bottle has history, and so does Pimblett’s lightweight run. He’s 24-4, fights out of Next Generation MMA in Liverpool, and sits at No. 6 in the Knockout Daily lightweight rankings. Before this year he’d stacked UFC wins over Tony Ferguson, King Green and Michael Chandler, the last of those a third-round TKO in the UFC 314 co-main event in April 2025. Then came UFC 324 on Jan. 24, 2026, when Justin Gaethje beat him by unanimous decision for the interim lightweight title. Pimblett’s most recent fight was July 11.
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Topuria is 17-1 and No. 3 on our board. He’s a former UFC champion at featherweight and lightweight, the first Georgian and Spanish fighter to win UFC gold, and his last fight came June 14. This week he’s been back in Georgia, where Championship Rounds posted footage of fans swarming him and another clip of him driving a KTM X-Bow GT-XR.
Don’t book the presser yet
The bottle may sit on a shelf for a while. In a separate clip from the same Piven appearance, shared by Spinnin Backfist, Pimblett said he’d prefer a Gaethje rematch over a fight with Topuria. That’s a revealing choice from a man promising props for a press conference he apparently isn’t rushing toward. Running it back with the guy who took his interim title shot makes competitive sense, though.
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Topuria has other doors open too. Alexander Volkanovski, who lost to Topuria, told Brett Bradford he’d take a rematch with a belt attached. “If it’s gonna be for a lightweight title then yeah,” Volkanovski said. “To get that win back would be great.”
So the line forms behind Gaethje on one side and Volkanovski on the other. Until someone signs a contract, Pimblett’s hand sanitizer bottle stays in his house, waiting for a microphone and a table.
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