UFC star Paddy 'The Baddy' Pimblett has backed Ronnie O'Sullivan to clinch his 8th World Championship at the Crucible this week, but says keep an eye on Northern Irish star Mark Allen as he continues his fine run of form.
The Belfast star has played some scintillating snooker so far this year and beat Judd Trump 10-9 to win the World Grand Prix earlier this year.
Allen and O'Sullivan are on opposite sides of the draw and could meet in the final in a match that would pit defending Champion O'Sullivan against the third ranked player in the world.
READ MORE: Paddy 'The Baddy' Pimblett gives his take on Conor McGregor v Michael Chandler
Despite Allen's brilliant form, Pimblett is still backing his good friend O'Sullivan to take home a historic 8th World title.
“Silly question lad," said Pimblett when asked who is going to win at the Crucible this year, "Ronnie’s going to win number 8."
But the Scouse star hasn't ruled out the 37-year-old Belfast potter, and revealed that The Rocket himself said to keep an eye on the Belfast native.
“Mark Allen, he’s on form this year. Like I said, I was talking to Ronnie the other day and he said Mark’s on form this year.
“So that’s what Ronnie says, because Ronnie never says himself ever. Ronnie always says someone else and he did say Allen.
'The Baddy' was at the Crucible over the weekend to watch O'Sullivan dismantle Hossein Vafaei in the round of 16. The build up between the match was fiery, with the Iranian cueist calling on the snooker legend to retire, and proclaimed that Ronnie was only nice in his sleep.
O'Sullivan went on to beat Vafaei 13-2 to march onto the quarter-finals, and Pimblett has opened up about The Rockets take on the situation.
"Ronnie didn’t trash talk him lad, it caught Ronnie off guard to be honest because Ronnie helped Hossein a couple of years ago when he got on the tour. Ronnie took him under his wing and looked after him.
“He didn’t see it coming, so when Hossein said all this about Ronnie he was like ‘where’s this come from?’ It was out of the blue so he had to teach him a snooker lesson."
O'Sullivan often gives off a vibe of not particularly caring for the sport of snooker and has been slammed in the past for criticising the quality of some of the youngsters coming through.
Perhaps surprisingly, this image perception isn't shared by Pimblett, who described how The Rocket is obsessed with the sport.
“It’s the opposite, the complete opposite vibes. I went to watch him and he won 6-2 on Friday and the opponent basically stole two frames. Ronnie was basically two shots away from winning 8-0. And he was disappointed.
“After it he was like ‘ah I didn’t play too well today’ and I was saying ‘Ronnie, he got lucky to win two frames what are you talking about? He got lucky.’
“It’s funny though because he did the same to me after my last fight. He was like ‘congratulations Pad’ and I was like ‘ah, s*** performance though Ronnie people think I lost.
“And he said ‘You didn’t though. You didn’t lose. That’s all that matters, you got in there and you won.
Paddy Pimblett was speaking ahead of Cage Warriors 153 which takes place in the 3Arena on April 29th. Ballymena’s Rhys McKee and MMA veteran Jimmy Wallhead top the bill in Welterweight Title unification bout. The majority Irish owned MMA promotion makes its return to Dublin with a card stacked with Irish talent such as James Sheehan, Adam Darby, Ryan Shelley, Leon Hill and Taka Mhandu. Tickets are available now at cagewarriors.com
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