Years ago, ice hockey dreams danced in the head of top UFC lightweight contender Arman Tsarukyan.
“When I was young, I didn't think about fighting. I just played hockey,” Tsarukyan, an Armenian born in Georgia and raised in Russia, recently told the Post. “I wanted to be an NHL player.”
Hoisting the Stanley Cup may not be in Tsarukyan's future, but if he can dethrone champion Islam Makhachev in the main event of Saturday's UFC 311 pay-per-view, he could bring UFC gold to Russia in the coming days. It might be possible. Englewood, California
Tsarukyan caused a small stir earlier this month when a video shared on his YouTube channel was translated into Russian in which he said he was not “100 percent invested” in mixed martial arts, but this does not mean that he has carefully updated the UFC's ranks. This was a surprising and incomprehensible fact for a martial artist who had climbed to the top. Since his promotional debut in 2019, he has weighed 155 pounds.
Michael Bisping, a former middleweight champion and UFC Hall of Famer who now frequently works as a color commentator for the promotion, caught on to those words and called them out on his podcast, “Believe You Me.” Ta.
“If there's even a little truth [to Tsarukyan’s lack of investment in MMA]he lost to Islam Makhachev,” Bisping said, “because… there's one guy who's dedicated, there's one guy who pushes himself, and that's Islam.”
As Tsarukyan explained to the Post, Bisping had nothing to worry about, and the 28-year-old chalked up the entire situation to a mistranslation of the video's English subtitles.
Tsarukian cited slang, which is difficult to translate from one language to another, as the main cause of the uproar.
While Makhachev has been focused on MMA all his life as a protégé of the late coach Abdulmanap Nurmagomedov and a friend of his mentor's son Khabib, a UFC legend, Tsarukyan's passion for the sport is more recent. This is what happened, he explained.
“We had completely different lifestyles, and Islam, which he was focused on all his life,” says Tsarukyan, a former aspiring hockey star. “But I started [to] I started investing when I was 18 or 17. [to] Train MMA. ”
Once he got the call from the UFC, his entire focus was on making the most of the opportunity, and to this day, he is “of course” giving 100 percent.
Winning the championship this weekend at the Intuit Dome is the most important thing for Tsarukyan (22-3, 14 finishes), but it was Makhachev who handed Tsarukyan a loss in their UFC debut on their shared home turf. Therefore, there is also the aspect of pursuing retaliation. Six years ago in Russia, both of them were up-and-comers at the time.
The decision loss in a fight that earned him Fight of the Night honors was just another obstacle in Tsarukyan's path to the top of the lightweight division.
He went on a five-fight winning streak over the next three years, posting a 9-2 UFC record, including a hard-fought decision loss to Mateusz Gamrot in 2022.
The loss, the latest blot on Tsarukyan's book, was erased just months before Makhachev (26-1, 17 finishes) submitted former champion Charles Oliveira for the new title at 155 pounds.
The result pleased Tsarukyan, who was rooting for Makhachev's continued success from afar. That's partly because he's a fellow Russian, but also for selfish reasons.
“I wanted it [Makhachev] That he will always win because he beat me, and if he lost people would say, 'Oh, he's not that good,' but he beat me.'' Tsarukyan suffered his only loss as a pro. explained the champion, who is 14-0 in the UFC since then. “When he beat everyone, I said to myself, 'Look, he's good, he has to practice hard.' So I wanted him to be the champion.”
While rematches in championship contention aren't exactly uncommon, it's much rarer for two prospects to meet and meet again years later for a title shot.
Leon Edwards and Kamaru Usman fought in such a situation, and Edwards needed a third match with the winner of the first fight to win the trilogy.
If Tsarukyan defeats Makhachev this weekend, Oliveira, who Tsarukyan defeated last April to earn a chance to win, will now be the leading candidate in the waiting list.
Makhachev's next fight, whether it's against Tsarukyan or against Makhachev, will likely be for the title.
Tsarukyan doesn't want to get ahead of himself, preferring to focus on Saturday first, but he is one of the few top-15 UFC prospects in his weight class under 30 and has said he wants to fight three times this year. .
“First of all, I want to win the title and win the matches. Then I can fight against everyone,” he said.
