{"id":810478,"date":"2026-07-19T16:15:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-19T16:15:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/810478\/"},"modified":"2026-07-19T16:15:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-19T16:15:14","slug":"covington-beats-tsarukyan-at-raf-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/810478\/","title":{"rendered":"Covington Beats Tsarukyan At RAF 11"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/boxingnews.com\/fighter\/arman-tsarukyan\/\" class=\"internal-link text-bone underline decoration-ash\/30 hover:decoration-gold underline-offset-2\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Arman Tsarukyan<\/a>&#8216;s unbeaten run in Real American Freestyle is over after Colby Covington ended it at RAF 11.<\/p>\n<p>Covington&#8217;s wrestling pedigree proved the decisive factor across three periods. He entered the main event 3-0 in RAF with technical fall victories over <a href=\"https:\/\/boxingnews.com\/fighter\/luke-rockhold\/\" class=\"internal-link text-bone underline decoration-ash\/30 hover:decoration-gold underline-offset-2\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Luke Rockhold<\/a> and Dillon Danis, and a 5-4 decision over Chris Weidman at RAF 09 in May. <\/p>\n<p>Tsarukyan opened with a front headlock in the early stages, but Covington&#8217;s defence neutralised it and cost Tsarukyan position. The shot clock punished Tsarukyan&#8217;s passivity and gave Covington his first point. <\/p>\n<p>The second period went to Tsarukyan \u2014 he secured a takedown for two points \u2014 but Covington responded emphatically in the closing seconds, sprawling on a Tsarukyan attempt and flattening him on his stomach to score another two points. Entering the final period, Covington led 5-2.<\/p>\n<p>Tsarukyan pushed hard in the third. With the clock winding down, he went for a takedown that could have changed everything. Covington sprawled. The whistle reset the position. Tsarukyan shot again in the final seconds. Covington sprawled again, as Covington won by decision. <\/p>\n<p>Covington used the post-match platform to name his next targets. He called out <a href=\"https:\/\/boxingnews.com\/fighter\/khamzat-chimaev\/\" class=\"internal-link text-bone underline decoration-ash\/30 hover:decoration-gold underline-offset-2\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Khamzat Chimaev<\/a>, Belal Muhammad, and <a href=\"https:\/\/boxingnews.com\/fighter\/tyron-woodley\/\" class=\"internal-link text-bone underline decoration-ash\/30 hover:decoration-gold underline-offset-2\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tyron Woodley<\/a>. Tsarukyan will be back. The question is whether Covington, now the <a href=\"https:\/\/boxingnews.com\/division\/cruiserweight\/\" class=\"internal-link text-bone underline decoration-ash\/30 hover:decoration-gold underline-offset-2\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">cruiserweight<\/a> champion, gives him a shot at the rematch. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arman Tsarukyan&#8216;s unbeaten run in Real American Freestyle is over after Colby Covington ended it at RAF 11.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":810479,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":["post-810478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810478","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=810478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/810479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=810478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=810478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=810478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}