Tsarukyan being escorted off of a plane<\/a> emerged online, courtesy of vlogger Adam Zubayraev, who claimed it was because the UFC lightweight contender was on his phone prior to takeoff. American Airlines later released a statement, stating that Tsarukyan\u2019s removal was due to him and his friends not \u201cstaying seated while the aircraft is taxiing.\u201d<\/p>\nTsarukyan and his friends then took a private jet to Philadelpha instead and Tsarukyan was in attendance at the RAF 8 pre-fight press conference to offer his version of events.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I had a team, we were 11 of us,\u201d Tsarukyan said. \u201cWe\u2019re just getting in the plane, it was, like, three empty seats, I asked the lady because my seat was next to my friend and he\u2019s a little bit big, and I said, OK, maybe there is an empty seat. So I asked the lady, \u2018Can I sit here?\u2019 She doesn\u2019t say yes or no. She said, \u2018Where\u2019s your seat?\u2019 I said, \u201829A.\u2019<\/p>\n
For whatever reason, Tsarukyan did not appreciate the flight attendant\u2019s response. He stepped away from the confrontation, but still chose a different seat to sit in from the one he was assigned. Tsarukyan claims a phone call and an upright table further escalated the situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said, \u2018Why you rude?\u2019\u201d Tsarukyan said. \u201cThen I sit in 30A, because it was empty, and then someone called to my friend. He picked up the phone and my other friend, he had opened his table and she came and said, \u2018Close your table.\u2019 And he said, \u2018OK. OK. I\u2019ll do that.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd \u2018Pucho\u2019\u2014someone called \u2018Pucho\u2019\u2014he took the phone and then three of us we were kicked out from the plane, the other seven they flew. Then we got the jet and they said, \u2018Bro, why didn\u2019t you tell me you were flying jet after that? We would like to get out, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
The crew eventually decided to return to the gate and Tsarukyan and three others were asked to exit the plane.<\/p>\n
Fortunately for Tsarukyan and company, they were able to secure private charter, and everything is on schedule for Tsarukyan to throw down on the mats with UFC legend Urijah Faber in Saturday\u2019s RAF 8 co-main event. The event airs live on Fox Nation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arman Tsarukyan was forced to exit an American Airlines flight ahead of his RAF 8 match in Philadelphia…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":614925,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,214253,214254,85,787,1396],"class_list":{"0":"post-614924","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-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-raf-wrestling","14":"tag-raf-wrestling-news","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-ufc","17":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614924","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=614924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}