Arman Tsarukyan was supposed to face Islam Makhachev for the lightweight title earlier this year, but now he just watched Makhachev capture the welterweight title at UFC 322, and he was quite impressed.<\/p>\n
Now, Tsarukyan looks to get back to the top of the 155-pound championship queue is as faces Dan Hooker in the main event of Saturday\u2019s UFC Qatar card in a pivotal matchup. The scheduled five-round tilt takes place at Ali Bin Hamad al-Attiyah Arena in the promotion\u2019s debut in Doha, and the card streams on ESPN+.<\/p>\n
Tsarukyan saw what Makhachev did in his dominant decision victory over Jack Della Maddalena at Madison Square Garden this past Saturday, and not only can he tip his cap, but Tsarukyan believes defeating Makhachev will be quite the feat for anyone \u2014 at either 155 or 170.<\/p>\n
\u201cA very good performance,\u201d Tsarukyan told MMA Fighting. \u201cI was shocked how he beat [Della Maddalena] so easy. It says what Islam level [is at right now], you know, he\u2019s doing different level right now. He\u2019s [in] his prime.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I don\u2019t know who can stop him right now, [at] 170 even.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tsarukyan was slated to headline UFC 311 against Makhachev for the lightweight championship in January, but a back injury forced Tsarukyan out of the bout the day before the event. The 29-year-old faced a lot of backlash from the fan base, and even had UFC CEO Dana White saying the top-ranked contender would have to \u201cfight his way back\u201d to a title shot.<\/p>\n
While having to withdraw from his first title fight was difficult, Tsarukyan revealed the biggest lesson he took from it.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t overtrain,\u201d Tsarukyan said. \u201cThat\u2019s the most important thing that I learned about the pull out.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s why I hurt myself always. That\u2019s why I try to do a lot of hiking when I want to train, or do something different, [like] walk or do bike, and don\u2019t do a lot of wrestling that I used to. Trying to save my my energy.\u201d<\/p>\n
With Makhachev out of the picture, the division looks a bit different with Ilia Topuria holding the 155-pound title following Topuria\u2019s first-round knockout of Charles Oliveira at UFC 317 in June.<\/p>\n
Tsarukyan is happy to play the hand the lightweight division has been dealt, but where he sits, he wishes things stayed the way they were at the beginning of the year.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, [it\u2019s] pretty good [with Topuria as lightweight champ],\u201d Tsarukyan explained. \u201c[It\u2019s] pretty good, yeah. But I wish Islam was a champion in our division\u2026 because he takes fights with contenders and fights with everybody, but Ilia\u2019s trying to find easy fights for him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arman Tsarukyan was supposed to face Islam Makhachev for the lightweight title earlier this year, but now he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293403,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,82,640,702],"class_list":{"0":"post-293402","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc","15":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}