Paddy Pimblett and Ilia Topuria share their sides of hand sanitizer incident at UFC London

Paddy Pimblett and Ilia Topuria have different reasons as to why they had a skirmish yesterday in London.

On Tuesday at check-in day, Pimblett threw a hand sanitizer bottle at the head of Topuria, and punches were thrown. No one really knew why it happened but according to ‘The Baddy’ he said Topuria was the one who went at him so he reacted with throwing the hand sanitizer bottle. The Brit said he wasn’t going to risk his fight getting called off by punching him so throwing the bottle made the most sense.

“As soon as he came out the double doors, he snared me, so I looked at him and said, ‘What?’” Pimblett said at media day (via MMAJunkie). “Then he walked towards me. I said, ‘What’s happening, lad?’ And as he got close to me, he swiped a slap at me, and obviously if you raise your hands at me, I’m going to do something. I wasn’t punching him because I’m not breaking my hand and then not be able to fight and not get my money on the weekend.

“So I stepped back, and I picked the hand sanitizer and bounced it off his head. And then he swung a big one, and I moved out of the way with ease. He’s got a little bit of small man syndrome,” Pimblett continued. “He’s only (5-foot-7), so I just tried to leave the little man to it. He wanted to come at me and act all that, and he got put in his place. I stood there on my own and there was about six of them, and he done nothing. If he wanted to do something, he would’ve come around the table and try and have a fight with me, but he didn’t. He stood on the other side of the table because he knows what’s good for him.”

Although Paddy Pimblett didn’t know the reason as to why Ilia Topuria went at him, the Georgian has a different story. For him, he saw Pimblett trash talk his country of Georgia on social media which he believes crossed the line as he has had family members die in the war to Russia which Pimblett made fun of.

“I read something I think like, ‘Now I know why Russia bombed Georgia,” Topuria said to MMAJunkie. “You guys are a bunch of idiots.’ So my reaction to someone taking this like a joke when in that war many innocent people died – we’re talking about children and people who had nothing to do with that. So for someone to laugh at that, and it’s also a painful subject for me because family members of mine died in that war and many countrymen of mine.

“So it’s not something that pleases me and from there everything started. And what can I say about someone who pokes fun at that? He’s an idiot and immature. If he thinks I’m going to take a step back when I see him, then he’s badly mistaken. He needs to pray that we don’t cross paths because I’ll go crazy.”