Is Paddy Pimblett the Next McGregor? What UFC 329 Means for His Cards
Paddy Pimblett choked out Benoit Saint Denis in 52 seconds, watched McGregor's comeback collapse, and crowned himself the new face of the UFC. His base rookie costs less than lunch. Here is my honest read on the next McGregor trade and what I would actually buy.
The two biggest fights at UFC 329 lasted a combined two minutes and one second, and I think the card market will be digesting them for the next year. Paddy Pimblett put Benoit Saint Denis to sleep in 52 seconds. Seventeen minutes later, Conor McGregor's knee gave out 69 seconds into the comeback the entire hobby had spent months bidding up. One era tried to restart and physically could not. The guy one fight earlier grabbed a backstage camera and claimed the throne out loud. I stayed up watching it happen in real time, and the collector half of my brain would not shut up: if there is even a small chance Paddy is the next McGregor, his cards are priced like nobody has considered the question. So let me consider it honestly.
Two Minutes That Flipped the Script
Start with what actually happened Saturday night in Las Vegas. In the co-main event, Saint Denis shot a takedown inside the first exchange, dove straight into a D'Arce choke, and went unconscious trying to escape it. According to MMA Junkie, the official result was a technical submission at 52 seconds of round one, the first submission loss of Saint Denis's career, and it earned Paddy a performance bonus. Pimblett is now 24-4 overall and 8-1 in the UFC at 31 years old, and the one loss is the reason this post has a bear case, which I will get to.
Then the main event. McGregor's return after five years away ended with his knee buckling barely a minute in, Max Holloway swarming, and the fight waved off. Pimblett was mid interview backstage when it happened, and Bloody Elbow caught the whole reaction: "Well he's finished. The new boy is in town. The main man is here. I can become the face of the organization now." You can call that disrespectful. I call it a fighter who understands exactly what job just opened up. For what it is worth, my plan to sell McGregor inventory into this fight aged about as well as I could have hoped. The climb happened, I listed into it, and the cliff showed up right on schedule.
The McGregor Blueprint Fits Better Than I Expected
I went into this planning to dunk on the comparison, because "the next McGregor" is the most overused phrase in MMA. But when I laid the two resumes side by side, the shape genuinely rhymes. Before the UFC, Pimblett won the Cage Warriors featherweight title at 21 in his hometown of Liverpool, out of the exact same promotion that minted McGregor before his 2013 UFC arrival. The mirror is not perfect, and I want to be straight about that: McGregor left Cage Warriors holding belts in two divisions at once, while Paddy lost his featherweight strap to Nad Narimani in 2017 and then came up short against Soren Bak for the vacant lightweight title in 2018. What carries over is everything else. He is British instead of Irish, Scouse instead of Dublin, and he has the same rare thing McGregor had: casual fans who do not watch a single other fighter know who he is. The walkout, the accent, the YouTube channel, the weight jokes, all of it travels beyond the hardcore audience. That crossover recognition is the single input that matters most for card demand, because hardcore fans buy tickets and casuals buy cardboard.
Now hold that against what McGregor cardboard did at its peak. His 2013 Topps Bloodlines Platinum one of one sold for 196,420 dollars at Goldin this June, the highest public sale of any UFC card ever, and his red ink Bloodlines rookie in a PSA 10 went for 92,720 dollars the same week. I am not predicting Pimblett gets anywhere near those numbers. I am pointing out that the gap between "face of the UFC" money and Pimblett money is currently about four orders of magnitude, and trades with that much room only need to be a little bit right.
What His Cards Cost the Morning After
Here is the part that genuinely surprised me when I pulled the comps this morning. Pimblett debuted in the UFC in 2021, so his rookie cards live in the Panini era alongside the rest of the 2021 to 2023 Prizm generation, and his flagship is the 2022 Panini Prizm UFC number 88. Per Sportscardspro, as of July 12 this is the entire price ladder:
| 2022 Prizm UFC #88 Pimblett rookie | Price | How often it trades |
|---|---|---|
| Raw base | around 2 to 3 dollars | about weekly |
| PSA 9 | 13.72 dollars | about weekly |
| Grade 9.5 | 19.99 dollars | rarely |
| PSA 10 | 41.33 dollars | about monthly |
The Silver parallel last traded around 9 dollars raw, per Sports Card Investor, which tracks 24 Pimblett variations in that set alone. Read that table again with the backstage quote in your head. A fighter who just declared himself the face of the organization, in the co-main event of the biggest card of the year, has a gem mint flagship rookie that costs less than a hobby blaster and trades about once a month. Whatever you believe about Paddy, that is not a market that has priced in the question. It fits the exact pattern from my UFC investing thesis: the top of this market already behaves like a major sport while everything under it still trades like a niche.
The Bear Case Is Doing Honest Work
Now the cold water, because I do not write hype pieces about fighters I have not stress tested. The single most important fact in Pimblett's card market is not the 52 seconds on Saturday. It is January. He got his title shot against Justin Gaethje at UFC 324, for the interim lightweight belt, and he lost. That loss aged better than anyone expected since Gaethje went on to take the undisputed title off Ilia Topuria in June, but it still means Paddy is 0 and 1 when the stakes were highest. And it is not the first time he came up short reaching for a belt: he lost his Cage Warriors lightweight title fight to Soren Bak back in 2018 too. McGregor did not become the face of the UFC by talking. He became it by knocking out Aldo in 13 seconds and winning belts in two divisions. Trajectory and arrival are different things, and the market pays for arrival.
Second, be honest about Saturday. Saint Denis dove face first into the best choke in Paddy's arsenal. A 52 second submission tells you Pimblett is a killer when a fight hits the floor, and it tells you nothing about whether he solves the elite wrestlers at the top of the division. Third, the stated dream fights are a McGregor bout that now depends on a 37 year old rebuilding a wrecked knee, and a grudge match with Topuria, who is a bad stylistic night for anybody. I own Topuria's 2022 Prizm rookie, and watching his premium wobble after one loss in June is a live reminder of how fast fighter markets reprice. A fighter is not a team, and I watch how violently those single night swings land on Card Ladder before I pay up for anyone.
How I Would Play the Next McGregor Trade
So here is what I am actually doing about it, filtered through the same rules I apply to everything I buy. The PSA 10 base rookie at around 41 dollars reads to me like a cheap call option. If Pimblett wins the lightweight title in the next 18 months and inherits even a slice of the spotlight McGregor just vacated, in the exact streaming era I mapped out in my post on where this market sits on the curve, a 41 dollar gem mint flagship rookie will look absurd in hindsight. If he stalls out as a fun contender, I am out the price of a dinner. I like that asymmetry a lot more than I like most of what is hot in the hobby right now.
The discipline is all in the entry. This week is the worst possible time to click buy, because the clip is everywhere and the fast money is chasing. That is the same Monday after trap I wrote about in my Mauricio Ruffy steel man case, and the right move is the boring one: let the spike breathe for two or three weeks, then buy the quiet. I will price every copy against eBay sold listings rather than active asks, check the gem population on PSA before paying any grade premium, and confirm the most recent real sale on 130point so I am buying a comp and not a feeling. Slabs and numbered color only. Raw base at 2 dollars is cheap for a reason, and it will still be everywhere no matter what Paddy does.
The Bottom Line
"The next McGregor" is the most dangerous phrase in this hobby, and I have watched it torch money on a dozen names. But Saturday was the first time the job actually came open while someone with the same Cage Warriors origin story, the same mic skills, and a genuinely global fanbase was standing there asking for it, one win removed from a title shot. I do not know if Paddy Pimblett arrives. I know that his gem mint flagship rookie costs 41 dollars while the market decides, and that the last guy to hold the title he is auditioning for tops out at 196,420 dollars a card. That gap is the trade. I am starting a small position for my collection once the fight week heat cools, sized so a Gaethje style reality check costs me nothing I will miss, and I will compare notes on the entry over on r/sportscards while I wait. The new boy might be in town. The cards are still priced like he never showed up.
Hero image: Paddy Pimblett on the James English podcast. Photo by James English, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0, cropped.
