Paddy Pimblett is one of the most colorful characters to enter the UFC in years. The hype was already building around the young Liverpool fighter as he climbed the Cage Warriors rankings, and his debut fight in the UFC confirmed he has some serious star potential. After the fight, his Instagram was flooded with over 750,000 followers.
Ahem, his *new* Instagram. The old one with 158,000 followers got deleted for ‘violating community rules.’ And now the same fate has befallen his Twitter account.
“Looks like I’ll be making a new twitter tonight ppl,” Paddy wrote on Instagram. “The worlds full of snowflakes ya can’t even give it back to trolls now a days but they can say what they want.”
We haven’t been able to dig into exactly what Pimblett did to end up on the wrong side of a Twitter ban, but “The Baddy” was never afraid to dish it in his mentions with fans and haters alike. When his old Instagram got nuked it was for (accidentally or intentionally) siccing his followers on some troll over a soccer disagreement.
“Someone on me Instagram was giving me grief,” Pimblett explained at the time. “Saying stuff to me. He’s from Wales, he was from Bristol. And he was a Manchester City fan. So I told him to go and support his local team. And he started trying to give me s—t back and forth so I put him on my story and gave him some stick. He must have reported me like a little b—ch.”
It’s not the best time for Paddy to find himself booted off one of the big three social media sites. The lightweight recently signed a big seven figure contract with Barstool Sports to become a brand ambassador.
Fortunately for Paddy, if anyone is gonna be understanding about getting your socials nuked for fighting snowflakes, it’s Barstool Sports. The network has positioned themselves as the rebel outsiders of the sports blogging world, and this is just more evidence that Paddy fits right in.
But as Donald Trump learned, losing your Twitter megaphone does indeed stop you from reaching a larger audience. And with so many snowflakes out there gunning for Pimblett, we don’t know whether a new account will last too long before getting shut right back down.
So for now if you want your Baddy fix, look him up on Instagram. Or wait for him to return to the cage — when and against who hasn’t been sorted yet, but we’ll keep you in the loop if Paddy can’t do it himself.