Cathal Pendred says he’s in pole position for CM Punk fight, compares his striking to “boxercise”

Could Cathal Pendred be in for a serious windfall?

The only Irishman competing at 170 lbs in the UFC is continuing to give hope for a match-up with former WWE superstar CM Punk. Last week, the animosity between the pair poured over to Twitter when Pendred joked that the boxing of CM Punk (real name Phil Brooks) made the Dubliner look like Muhammad Ali.

CM Punk on the pads making me look like Muhammad Ali ?? pic.twitter.com/o6HQ1PNkJA

— Cathal Pendred (@Pendred) August 11, 2015

"I didn’t even call him out last week," Pendred told Ariel Helwani on the MMAHour. "I put out a tweet with a short clip of him hitting pads, and I didn’t use his Twitter handle or tag him in it or anything. I just put the video up. And you know me, as the Irish say, I’m always having a little bit of craic. I was actually more ripping the piss out of myself than I was CM Punk. Everyone knows my stand-up hasn’t looked too beautiful since my UFC career started. And I just said, look at this guy, he makes me look like Muhammad Ali hitting the pads. So, I was actually just insulting myself in a half-hearted way."

Brooks signed a rather unusual deal with the UFC late last year in which the promotion granted the former wrestler as much time as he needed to prepare for his mixed martial arts debut and an opponent has yet to be announced. While the UFC are unlikely to match Brooks up with a fighter as experienced as Pendred, The Punisher believes he is in pole position to get the "lottery" bout.

"The day that he got signed by the UFC I said the Chick Magnet fight was a lottery ticket," he said. "He is the lottery ticket. I think every fighter should want that fight that’s in the UFC. There’s a lot of money to be made, and I’m one of the guys that’s in his division, so I definitely wouldn’t turn it down. "I actually think that I’m in the pole position for it now because, nearly every guy in middleweight and welterweight has called the guy out, and he hasn’t responded to any of them. "I was having a great time with it to be honest, I thought it was brilliant. That just makes me think that maybe this guy is delusional, as some of the fans that he has, and actually thinks that he could beat me in a fight."

Pendred takes on Tom Breese in his next UFC outing as he looks to bounce back from his first defeat in the octagon, a split decision loss to John Howard at UFC 189. And while the former Cage Warriors welterweight champion has claimed to want to take a break from MMA to shore up his boxing, that doesn't mean that he would turn down the lucrative fight with CM Punk.

"I genuinely feel like he’s responding to me just because he feels that he might have a shot, or else he feels like he could maybe at least not die in there with me," Pendred added. "I’ve seen in a lot of his interviews since he joined, he looks more scared now than he did -- I think he looks more unsure of himself now than he did when he first decided to do this. I think he’s in the gym now and he’s having a hard time and he’s realized, I bit off more than I can chew now. "I reckon he thinks Pendred is the way to go, and if that’s the way he wants to go, there’s a couple of hundred thousand reasons I think it will be the way to go, too."

If Pendred does decide to take an extended break away from mixed martial arts to get a few pro-boxing fights then all likelihood of a grudge match with CM Punk will disappear but that won't stop the Dubliner from taking the mick out of his newest rival

"My striking has looked atrocious in the UFC so far, and that’s the type of guy I am," he said. "I have no problem ripping it out of myself. But [CM Punk’s footage] made me look good. I’ve seen boxercise classes where people were hitting the pads better than that."

H/t to TheMMAHour