It's a sure sign of crossover success.

Michael Jordan had sneakers and Space Jam. Peyton Manning had takeout pizza and life insurance. And these days, Conor McGregor has wireless headphones and Irish whiskey.

So while the idea of Paddy Pimblett dipping his toes in the shallow end of product pitching isn't exactly novel, it doesn't mean his determination to become a worldwide commodity is any less intense.

The mop-topped Englishman dubbed "Paddy the Baddy" had household MMA name status by his one-year UFC anniversary last summer thanks to three Octagonal finishes in barely 16 minutes and a full-throated willingness to play a competitive heel whenever within range of a microphone.

It's the sort of charisma that moves merchandise and fattens bank accounts.

Toward that end, his collaboration of choice at the moment is with The Vitamin Shoppe, a New Jersey-based nutritional supplement giant that's become the exclusive U.S. retail partner for the "All Baddy Everything" Baddy Berry flavor of pre-workout powder, which launched earlier this month.

The signature upshot stems from Pimblett's prolonged relationship with Applied Nutrition, a U.K. brand that got its start in his hometown of Liverpool and developed the ABE (All Black Everything) product line with an aim to boost physical performance, reduce fatigue and ensure laser focus throughout training.

Instructions for workout warriors: Mix with cold water and consume 15 minutes before exercise.

The blueprint for the pitchman?

Provide celebrity street cred. Shake well. Calculate profits.

"I haven't got a five-year plan and like that," he told Bleacher Report. "I still always want to be a UFC champion. That's my goal. Even though it is very far away at the minute, I'm still planning on doing that. But I've always said I'm always going to be a businessman, and I think I'll be a lot of other things as well. I won't just be a fighter and a businessman. I'll be in films and stuff like that.

"I'm a fighter first and foremost, but I know fighting just opened a lot of other doors for me."

To keep those doors open, though, he'll need to keep winning.

And persona or not, it'd help to be a little more convincing than last time.

Pimblett's most recent appearance in the cage in December did yield a fourth straight UFC victory and 20th in 23 fights, but it wasn't quite the dominant run-through each of the initial trio had been.

Instead, he was pushed the three-round distance by veteran lightweight Jared Gordon and emerged after 15 minutes with a unanimous decision panned immediately by the UFC 282 broadcast crew and later by no less an authority than MMA Junkie, which labeled it as 2022's Robbery of the Year.

Gordon went a step further, branding it one of the promotion's three worst ever.

Not unexpectedly, Pimblett disagrees.

In fact, he claimed to have zero concern in the moments before the decision was read and had no inkling it was even an issue until Joe Rogan led off the post-fight interview by asking if he was surprised.

"I was like, 'No,' because I wasn't," he said. "I thought I won two rounds to one, and I watched the fight back, and I thought I won two rounds to one. I'll be honest, it was a lot closer than I thought it was. I never dominated, but I think the only clear round in the whole fight is the second, and that's for me. The third round, he just holds me. He doesn't really do nothing."

Still, the close nod in his favor spurred predictable assertions that he's a favorite son.

And the predictable bristling from their target.

"People try to say, 'Oh, it's because he's Dana's boy,'" Pimblett said. "How am I Dana's boy? He came on my podcast. I'm not his boy. I'm just a fighter on his roster. People say he influences judges. He can't.

"That's got nothing to do with it. I thought I won. A lot of people in the crowd thought I won. When I've spoken to people, a lot have shared that with the commentary and stuff people thought that Jared Gordon won. But then, when they watched it back without the commentary on, they thought I won."

Legit or not, the controversy has stoked interest in a Gordon runback.

Provided, that is, the New Yorker gets past fellow veteran Bobby Green in a Fight Night bout set for April 22 at the Apex in Las Vegas. Pimblett has gone public saying he'll be rooting for a second crack at Gordon, whom he called out on YouTube from a hospital bed this week while preparing to have surgery to fix damage to his right ankle sustained in their fight.

But it won't be for a while.

He'll spend four weeks in a walking boot and another couple on crutches before he's even able to move around without concern, then dive headfirst into matrimony when he marries longtime girlfriend Laura Gregory in May. A summertime honeymoon will take him out of the fight-prep running for several weeks as well, leaving him to suggest a return won't come until the "back end of the year."

That'll likely mean Gordon, or perhaps Green, first in a UK-based main event. Then a follow-up fight that would allow for a jump into the UFC's Top 15 at 155 pounds.

And from there, the uber-ambitious contender can begin imagining himself in the sort of high-profile event the weight class hosted at UFC 284 in early February, when champion Islam Makhachev outlasted featherweight king Alexander Volkanovski over five classic rounds in Australia.

For the record, Pimblett scored it a draw. And he knows he's not ready.

Yet.

"I watch as a fan," he said. "After my last performance, I can't even think about fighting some of them. Got to step my game up. I just need to get back in the gym and get training, as soon as this ankle is better. I'll be back better than ever before at the end of the year.

"Of course, that's where I see myself. And we'll see where it goes from there."