UFC bantamweight contender Sean O’Malley admitted that lightweight prospect Paddy Pimblett is “kind of smart” with his trash talking.

Ever since making his UFC debut earlier this month with a KO win over Luigi Vendramini, Pimblett has been a thorn in the side of many other UFC fighters with his trash talking. One of the fighters who he has targeted with his trash talk is O’Malley, who is one of the UFC’s youngest and brightest stars. While one would figure O’Malley wouldn’t exactly be thrilled with what Pimblett has said about him, O’Malley said that he appreciates that he’s trying.

“I didn’t know of him until the UFC kind of started posting about him, and I obviously don’t follow him, so I just had a bunch of people telling me, ‘Yo, Paddy’s talking sh*t,’ and saying he was talking sh*t, so I’m not going to not talk sh*t back. I heard him. He’s talking sh*t so I’ve got to talk a little sh*t back, right? So yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know what his beef was with me, but as ugly and stupid as he may look, he’s kind of smart. He’s talking about the biggest names in the UFC,” O’Malley told MMAFighting.com’s The MMA Hour.

“I’m clearly one of the biggest draws. I’m the cash cow and he knows that, so why not? He’s got to use my name, he’s got to say my name. It makes sense. Like I said, people want to see characters. He understands that. He’s going to be a character, he’s going to say what he needs to say,” O’Malley said. “He went out and performed the way he needed to, aside from almost getting knocked out. I think that could be a potential big fight. I don’t know, we’ll see. That was my first time I’ve ever seen him fight, we’ll see how he does against (better competition). It’s similar with me — people want to see me fight top guys, people want to see him fight top guys — so we’ll see how he competes with the top (of his division).”

Do you agree with Sean O’Malley that Paddy Pimblett has been smart with his trash talk?