Luke Riley on Paddy Pimblett’s unorthodox pep talk ahead of his dream UFC debut

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Interview: British featherweight Riley reflects on his stunning knockout victory in his maiden UFC outing, which bagged him a $50,000 bonus

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It’s 8pm local time at UFC Qatar and things aren’t going particularly well for Next Gen MMA. Shem Rock has just been outpointed on his debut and, back home, Liverpool have just been demolished at Anfield by Nottingham Forest. Luke Riley, also a UFC debutant, is getting ready to enter the cage, tasked with raising spirits on what has thus far been a deflating night in Doha for the Merseyside-based gym.

“Shem had lost and Liverpool had lost. That’s the one thing Paddy did say: ‘You f***ing better win now.’” Those were the choice words of Paddy Pimblett, Riley’s team-mate with whom he shares a brother-like bond with. “We don’t need to have big motivational speeches. He knew what I was going to do,” Riley told The Independent. With one sharp left hook, the mood changed.

Riley had spent the first round suffocated by his Bogdan Grad’s wrestling. “There was no chance I was letting him do that again,” he said, reflecting on what was going through his head on the stool. The Widnes-raised featherweight was true to his thoughts and made sure to leave his Grad looking at the stars 30 seconds into the second. He sent his corner into raptures, hurling his mouthguard at the fence before leaping up the cage into the arms of Pimblett, who was celebrating like a man possessed. “It’s just raw emotion, it’s what people want to see,” he added.

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Yet as the colossal figure of referee Marc Goddard stepped in to pull the victorious Riley off his downed opponent, joy was not the prevailing emotion. It was sheer relief: “Thank f***.”

He laughed and continued: “You’re just made up. Sometimes I’ve had fights where I’ve been very, very close to stopping them and I’ve come out the cage gutted because obviously I didn’t get the finish. But when the ref calls the fight, that’s always my first initial feeling: ‘Thank f*** you stopped that.’”

Riley, still undefeated at 12-0, proved that his knockout-artist reputation from the regionals could translate to the big leagues in a scintillating display that would earn him a $50,000 performance-of-the-night bonus. There’s no surprise that when he took to the mic, he wasn’t exactly focussed on his media training.

For the viewers watching from home, you could only make out every second or third word of his post-fight interview; the UFC bleeper had their hands full. “It probably wasn’t the best post-fight interview from me. I didn’t really know what to say so I just swore a bit,” Riley conceded, ironically blanking on the words of wisdom provided by one of the UFC’s chief matchmakers. “I think Mick Maynard did say before not to swear because it’s going to get bleeped out, but once you win all feelings and rules and stuff are just out the window, aren’t they?”

It nevertheless acted as the culmination of years of toil and stress, having seen appearance after appearance on Dana White’s Contender Series go up in smoke due to visa issues. Riley thought more misfortune was coming his way when he received a call from Cage Warriors promoter Graham Boylan in the summer, on his mum’s birthday no less.

He recalled: “I just woke up from sleep and I’d had all these missed calls from Graham. Obviously I was meant to be on that season of Contender Series. I had all these issues and sometime in July, the UFC had pushed my visa through and I had to send off my passport. By this time of Graham ringing me, it had been eight weeks and I hadn’t heard a single word back.

“He rang me and said, ‘Have you heard anything on your visa?’ No, f*** all. No emails, no contact from the embassy. He said, ‘Well, it looks like you’re not going to be on this season of Contender Series again,’ and I was just like, ‘Oh, you’re kidding me.’

“I was stressed on the phone. ‘Ah, no way, what’s going to happen?’ He was like, ‘Doesn’t matter anyway, welcome to the big leagues – got you signed straight.’ I was just made up. My reaction wasn’t too big, I did have to message him afterwards and say sorry for the lack of emotion. I just didn’t know what to say – it was pure shock.

“When I got told I was signed, that weight lifted off my shoulders was unbelievable. It was a lot of stress on my shoulders with the visa issues so I’m made up to just be in the UFC where I belong.”

Such a highly-anticipated moment, his maiden fight on the biggest stage MMA can offer, could risk being derailed by nerves. But having branded himself as “emotionless”, Riley says the occasion didn’t get to him. “It felt exactly the same as all my fights,” he insisted. “Apart from the walkout and the venue, it felt nerves-wise exactly the same in the cage, to me anyway. It didn’t feel abnormal – just another fight in a bigger and better venue.”

Riley is ready to get used to the spotlight - supreme confidence in your own ability is necessary for a fighter to succeed in this sport, and the featherweight is certain that him reaching the mountain top is a question of when, not if. “Hundred percent,” he said, putting a two-year time scale on taking the gold. “I’d say at 28, 29, that’s when I’m going to have the belt. I’ve always said that.”

The soft-spoken hard-hitter is on the right track. But for the moment, he’s just happy to be doing what he loves, only now with the added benefit of proper financial reward. “I’ve always said if I got into fighting to make money, I would’ve quit a long time ago because I’ve not really made much,” he admitted. “But I love fighting. I’d fight for the rest of my life without earning a single penny, but it’s very nice to be starting to get paid now.”

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