Paddy the Baddy and Meatball Molly are laughing, again, in a place of dark pain. On Kempston Street, in the heart of Liverpool, the Next Generation MMA gym rocks with joyful noise even though it is here that Paddy Pimblett and Molly McCann practise their bone-breaking kicks and punches. On the mat, and in the cage upstairs, they are flung to the ground by heavier sparring partners who grapple and half-choke them in a restrained imitation of everything that awaits on Saturday night at a sold-out O2 Arena.
