Fighting for Liverpool: Paddy the Baddy and Meatball Molly’s UFC takeover

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.

The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) steams back into London for the first time in three years and the Liverpool fighters threaten to blow the roof off as Pimblett and McCann each take their turn in the cage. Pimblett is being called the next Conor McGregor and he is not shy in promising to “take over the organisation” and become “the UFC’s new cash cow”.

His great friend McCann, his “big sister”, has overcome poverty, drug addiction in her family and depression to come out as gay and be the first English woman to win a UFC fight. Her nickname stems from her past work in Subway, where she left every shift smelling of meatballs. She also knows what it is like to win a fight with a shattered eye socket and to be choked unconscious.

They understand the danger facing them but they can’t stop kidding around on a Wednesday morning. “I’m a fat little kid at heart,” Pimblett says as he and McCann talk about biscuits and politics. McCann has just pulled on a blue Ukraine T-shirt, having decided the Russian onslaught means she should save her Fuck the Tories top for another day, which sets Pimblett off on a riff. Custard Creams top his list of unacceptable “Tory biscuits” but he makes an exception for deluxe M&S Shortbread,