Paddy Pimblett secured a big victory at UFC London, submitting Jordan Leavitt in the second round. After the win, instead of his usual loud and brash voice that fans were used to seeing, the 27-year-old used his time in the spotlight to speak about an important issue.
An emotional Pimblett revealed that his friend had passed away and pleaded with the men to start getting rid of all the stigma of talking about feelings and mental health issues.
“Woke up Friday morning at 4am to a message that one of my friends back home had committed suicide. This was five hours before my weigh-in. So, Ricky, boy, that’s for you,” Pimblett said in his post-fight interview.
“There is a stigma in this world that men can’t talk about. Listen, if you’re a man with a weight on your shoulders and you think the only way to solve it is to kill yourself, please talk to someone. Talk to anyone. People would rather, I know I’d rather have my partner cry on my shoulder, than go to his funeral next week. So please let’s get rid of this stigma, and men start talking.”
Pimblett spoke more about it in the post-fight press conference, stating that he wants to start a charity or foundation that focuses on mental health.
“Men don’t (speak). Men feel like ‘oh, I can’t just go and tell her that because she’s going to think I’m a little fungus.’ This is how men think,” she said. “As I said in the cage, I would rather have my friend come and talk to me and cry on my shoulder, than have to cry while carrying his coffin a week later. Split-second decisions ruin lives, and that’s what happened this week.
“People in the position I’m in, people who have a little bit of attention on them, people who have some following, should help people. People who are in the same position as me, should try to help someone,” she said. “I’m starting a charity for little boys, the ‘little bad guys’, but obviously now I’m also thinking of doing a men’s mental health charity, because the UK doesn’t give any funding for that. There is no funding and it is the leading cause of death for men ages 21-45. Nobody even talks about it. Men commit suicide and nobody cares. We have to change it.”
While things are starting to look up compared to before, as Pimblett pointed out, there’s still a pretty bad stigma around mental health in general. It is especially prevalent in sports, where macho culture and testosterone-fueled environments can lead to feelings and mental health issues being written off as weakness.
That’s why it’s nice to see Pimblett and a few other fighters start to break the norm and use their platform to try and spread more awareness on a topic that can often be ignored and dismissed.
