{"id":318741,"date":"2025-11-30T14:45:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-30T14:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/318741\/"},"modified":"2025-11-30T14:45:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-30T14:45:08","slug":"tsarukyan-rages-against-fake-rankings-that-landed-pimblett-a-title-shot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/318741\/","title":{"rendered":"Tsarukyan rages against \u2018fake rankings\u2019 that landed Pimblett a title shot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Arman Tsarukyan says he knew he was getting passed over for the next UFC lightweight title shot when he fought in Qatar, but didn\u2019t expect the UFC to pull out an interim title bout for UFC 324 in January.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Or at least that\u2019s the official story. Tsarukyan doesn\u2019t quite believe that line, and thinks this is all just another story to help the UFC build up Paddy Pimblett.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cI already knew that Paddy was going to fight Ilia Topuria in January, but I didn\u2019t know they were going to do the interim title with Justin Gaethje and Paddy,\u201d Tsarukyan told ESPN MMA.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cAt the end of the day, Ilia didn\u2019t fight,\u201d he continued. \u201cAnd I think this is a game plan. It\u2019s not, like, family issue or something. It\u2019s that they wanna make star Paddy Pimblett and bring him to fight for the title with a bigger name and make it a big fight, like Khabib versus Conor.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Whether that\u2019s true or not, the result is the same for Tsarukyan: he\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mmamania.com\/latest-news\/406213\/is-ilia-topuria-running-from-arman-tsarukyan-he-is-threatened\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">not getting a sniff<\/a> at the lightweight title until the winner of the interim faces Topuria sometime in the middle of the year. For an angry fella like Tsarukyan, you\u2019d think that would upset him, but he\u2019s trying to keep things in perspective.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cThey told me, \u2018It\u2019s gonna happen, be ready,\u2019\u201d he said of his own title shot. \u201cDon\u2019t get stressed, because it is what it is. And, you know, it\u2019s a business.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cEverybody knows I\u2019ll beat everybody. It\u2019s just about time. Okay, it\u2019s gonna be in the summer or whatever, but they know I could beat everybody. That\u2019s why they didn\u2019t give me title fight there. Paddy, for me, it\u2019s a easy work. Justin Gaethje, easy work. Ilia, easy work. It was hard work against Islam, but he left. So nobody is on my level on this division right now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">That doesn\u2019t mean he isn\u2019t upset over the Pimblett-induced delay.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cWhy does a bulls&#8211;t guy like Paddy beat just one [top] ranked [opponent] and they made a fake ranking and put him on the [top] five?\u201d Tsarukyan asked. \u201cIt\u2019s a business, it\u2019s not just a sport. So they can do whatever they wanna do, but at the end of the day, I\u2019m gonna be a champion. It\u2019s just time, you know, the difference of time. Beginning of the year or the end of [next] year. But it\u2019s hard.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arman Tsarukyan says he knew he was getting passed over for the next UFC lightweight title shot when&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318742,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85,1396],"class_list":{"0":"post-318741","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-mma","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318741","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=318741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}