Pimblett & Giannetti: Don’t Blame Paddy

Pimblett & Giannetti: Don’t Blame Paddy

Cage Warriors 111 hits London later today, but despite 3 title fights on the card much of the anticipation for the card was the return of the poster boy of the promotion Paddy Pimblett.

Pimblett hasn’t been seen inside a cage since September 2018, a defeat against Soren Bak for the Cage Warriors lightweight title.

Pimblett went into the fight with a wrist injury that hadnt fully healed from a recent operation. Pimblett lost and damaged the wrist again, he gambled and paid a heavy price for it.

Further surgery followed, as did physio and bouts of depression, a promising career at great risk put Pimblett on the brink. But gradually he saw light from the darkness and a MMA return was booked, with Donovan Desmae picked to welcome Pimblett back to work.

Unfortunately Desmae pulled out due to injury at the eleventh hour, but Joe Giannetti stepped in at short notice to save the day, or so we thought.

Sadly Giannetti couldn’t make weight and the fight was pulled from the card on Thursday.

Giannetti weighed in at 163lbs and claimed he couldn’t cut any more weight. Taking the American at his word, if he had indeed stopped sweating and his body was done, the call was correct to stop the cut.

The safety of the fighters should always be the number one concern, and with Giannetti saying he had cut 25lbs in 10 days, could this have been avoided.

Should Giannetti have taken the fight if he was so off the lightweight limit, should he have realised and said something sooner in the days leading up to the fight, surely he would have known there was a real danger of missing weight. At the end of the day, Giannetti wasn’t anywhere near making 155lbs, he wasn’t even close.

Pimblett has taken his share of criticism for not taking the fight, but why. Remember Pimblett rolled the dice in his last fight and lost, why should he do so again, he made weight his opponent didn’t.

Personally I don’t blame Pimblett, why take the risk, he has done nothing wrong, the fault lay with others not him. It could have been avoided for sure, but the victim here is Pimblett, and nobody will be more frustrated he’s not fighting tonight than him.