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[autotag]Guram Kutateladze[/autotag]’s callout of [autotag]Paddy Pimblett[/autotag] turned a little ugly, and he’s not willing to let him off the hook.
Kutateladze (12-2 MMA, 1-0 UFC), who’s currently healing from knee surgery, called out the recently signed former Cage Warriors champion, but Pimblett was rather dismissive of him.
The pair traded barbs on Twitter, but after Pimblett made some insensitive comments in reference to the war between Russia and Georgia that claimed many Georgian lives in 2008, it caused an uproar from the Georgian fans, with a few fighters like Ilia Topuria and Liana Jojua chiming in.
Although Pimblett (16-3 MMA, 0-0 UFC) later apologized and deleted his tweets, Kutateladze hasn’t forgotten his words.
“He answered the way he did – very insulting for me – then I just answered back,” Kutateladze told MMA Junkie. “So I told him to stay humble until he’s forced to become humble. At the time, I was in Bahrain and there were some Internet issues. So I went in in the evening, and I saw like 30 or 40 tweets from the guy, and I was like, ‘OK, he went crazy on me and my manager Nima.’ He wrote some very insulting things to him, and it’s really disgusting. He talked about Georgia, he talked about my people, my country, about war between Russia and Georgia – that Georgia deserves what happened.
“But after he realized that the Georgian people started pressuring him like, ‘Hey, now you’re talking that it’s OK, that we deserve to die’ – this is not a joke. You don’t joke about some things. There are limits to everything. You have to respect the country, religion, family and stuff like that. He deleted his tweets and he kind of apologized, but you have to take responsibility for what you say. By deleting your tweets, it doesn’t mean you never said it. The words you say, they don’t disappear. I hope I meet him one day in the octagon, and I can punish this person for everything he said and for his attitude.”
But Kutateladze revealed he currently has a fight in the works – and it’s not Pimblett. That doesn’t mean he’s moved on from the idea of fighting him though, and he still hopes to get his hands on him in the future.
“I didn’t move on from Paddy,” Kutateladze said. “The thing is always going to be there. It’s not a childish thing for him, like five minutes you’re sad, or mad or grumpy about it, then after five minutes you forget about it. It’s not like that. We’re adults. I got an offer from the UFC for my next opponent, but right now I can’t say the name. But there’s going to be a fight during the summer and we’ll hope for the best and keep on thinking positive.”
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