{"id":303452,"date":"2025-11-23T12:16:16","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T12:16:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/303452\/"},"modified":"2025-11-23T12:16:16","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T12:16:16","slug":"the-man-to-dethrone-ilia-topuria-pros-react-to-arman-tsarukyan-crushing-dan-hooker-at-ufc-qatar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/303452\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The man to dethrone Ilia Topuria\u2019: Pros react to Arman Tsarukyan crushing Dan Hooker at UFC Qatar"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Arman Tsarukyan, you might just be the next challenger for the UFC lightweight title.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The No. 1 contender cemented his case Saturday in the main event of UFC Qatar with a clinical win over Dan Hooker, dominating Hooker with his wrestling and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mmafighting.com\/ufc\/458025\/arman-tsarukyan-wants-ilia-topuria-next-finishing-dan-hooker-with-arm-triangle-choke-in-ufc-qatar-main-event\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">finishing him with an arm-triangle choke<\/a> in the second round. It was a spectacular performance for Tsarukyan, who spent much of 2025 on the shelf after missing out on a championship opportunity against Islam Makhachev this past January when a back injury forced him to withdraw from UFC 311 a day before fight night.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Afterwards, Tsarukyan called for a shot at current champion Ilia Topuria, and several pros agreed that Tsarukyan is the most deserving contender at 155 pounds.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">On Twitter, former two-division UFC champion Henry Cejudo said, in no uncertain terms, that Tsarukyan \u201cwill be the man to dethrone Ilia Topuria.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">See more social media reactions to the UFC Qatar main event below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arman Tsarukyan, you might just be the next challenger for the UFC lightweight title. The No. 1 contender&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303453,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,1347,44,41,39,42,40,787,1396],"class_list":["post-303452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-latest-news","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}