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In what feels like the click-bait bout of the year, the UFC is matching up Paddy Pimblett and Tony Ferguson for its 296 event in December (December 16, 2023).
SportsBetting.ag opened odds for the fight Friday night, installing Pimblett as a -250 favorite with Ferguson coming back as a +210 underdog.
With just over 75% of the early money on Pimblett, the odds have moved toward the favorite. Here is the current line:
Tony Ferguson +240
Paddy Pimblett -280
Ferguson returned to the lightweight division to face Bobby Green at UFC 291 on July 29, 2023. He lost the fight via technical submission due to an arm-triangle choke in the final seconds of the third round. This was his 6th straight loss following a period in which he went 12 consecutive bouts between 2013 and 2019.
Ahead of UFC 291, he discussed his future goals.
“I want five fights and then a title,” he said. “It's got to be five of the right fights, finish the right way with all the fixings, just like a nice little steak that you're throwing on the grill with the sweet potato pie and everything else that goes with it. The sweeter that each fight gets, the closer I'm going to get to that title. When I remodeled my house, I made room. I had to make room on my plate. It wasn't like, oh, I got enough on my plate. No, I had to get a bigger f**king plate. And right now, I got Bobby Green and he likes to talk s**t. And when somebody likes to talk s**t, a guy would have better luck running through hell with his underwear soaked in gasoline than to f**k with a guy like me.”
Grasso-Shevchenko Decision Sparks Debate: The Fight Guys React & Preview... @betonline_ag https://t.co/ZXnooopN18 via @YouTube
— gambling911 (@gambling911) September 23, 2023
Paddy Pimblett is among the more colorful fighters in the sport today. But Pimblett previously said he would be "lucky to fight this year" after undergoing surgery in March after injuring his ankle at UFC 282.
"I hurt my foot in the first round, in like the first minute or two, threw a kick, hurt it," Pimblett told Sky Sports in April (h/t MMA Junkie.) "I felt it, like, but obviously we crack on, we get through the fight... It was a lot worse than we thought. I had to get inner and outer-ligament surgery, well reconstruction, so, it's big."
- Don Shapiro, Gambling911.com
