Paddy Pimblett Wants an Ultimate Fighter Season With Ilia Topuria
Paddy Pimblett wants a season of The Ultimate Fighter opposite Ilia Topuria, and he is selling it as the show that could put the series back on the map. The Liverpool lightweight said the two of them would coach while they are still active, then meet with six weeks of house tension already behind them.
Pimblett is 24-4 after a first-round submission of Benoit Saint Denis at UFC 329 in July. That win followed a five-round unanimous-decision loss to Justin Gaethje for the interim lightweight title at UFC 324 in January. Topuria is 17-1 and no longer champion, after Gaethje took the lightweight belt from him at UFC Freedom 250 on June 14.
Neither man has a confirmed next opponent. That gap is the opening Pimblett is trying to fill with a television build rather than a standard announcement.
He started with an older idea, then replaced the partner. “I’d love to do The Ultimate Fighter, I remember a couple of years ago Moicano saying to do The Ultimate Fighter with me, that would have been great television, but now I’d love to do The Ultimate Fighter with Ilia Topuria,” Pimblett said.
Renato Moicano has been on the other side of that conversation before, and he has not rated Pimblett’s chances against Topuria. Pimblett is no longer asking for Moicano. He wants the former two-division champion in the other coaching chair.
The pitch was less about game plans than about living in the house. “I would have his head in the shed for six weeks,” Pimblett said. “He wouldn’t know where to look, he wouldn’t know what to say, I’d have him feeling awkward constantly.”
That is the same rivalry Pimblett has been feeding since a 2022 altercation around a UFC London card. A coaching season would turn a social-media argument into daily footage, which is the part of the format that used to carry the show.
He reached for the season that still defines that model. “Me and Ilia would bring the ratings back to The Ultimate Fighter, like Season 10 with Rampage and Rashad,” Pimblett said.
Season 10, in 2009, put Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and Rashad Evans in charge of opposing teams and sent them into a coach fight at UFC 114. Pimblett is arguing that active rivals, not retired names, are what made that season work.
He then made the booking request directly. “So yeah, if you’re gonna do a season of The Ultimate Fighter and you just want co-coaches who are actually still fighting because the last few haven’t, do me versus Ilia, and we’ll bring The Ultimate Fighter back, it’ll be a reincarnation,” Pimblett said.
The claim that recent coaches were no longer active fighters is his, not a UFC admission. What is clear is that he wants the season built around two lightweights who can still be booked against each other when filming ends.
That is the part that would matter for the division. Gaethje holds the belt, and Arman Tsarukyan has been treated as the leading contender after his first-round finish of Mauricio Ruffy at UFC 331. A Pimblett-Topuria season would not jump either man past that line by itself.
It would, if the UFC agreed to it, freeze two marketable names into a long promotional window. Pimblett has already said he will fight Topuria, Gaethje, Tsarukyan, or Charles Oliveira if the name is on a contract. Topuria has not answered this coaching call.
Nothing in the comments suggests a season has been offered. Pimblett is asking for the slot, not announcing one, and both fighters are still waiting on their next bout.
If the UFC wants a coach fight with a built-in audience, this is the pairing he is putting on the table. Until that call comes, the lightweight picture still runs through Gaethje, and Pimblett’s route back stays a standard matchup rather than six weeks in the house.
