Arman Tsarukyan has long chased UFC gold, but he’s also dreaming of an RAF matchup with UFC legend Georges St-Pierre.
The newly crowned RAF middleweight crossover champion spoke to the media after a lopsided drubbing of Dillon Danis at Friday’s event in Las Vegas, and discussed his future plans now that he has a title around his waist. He’s hoping that more marquee names from the MMA world make their way over to RAF, including the long-retired “GSP.”
“We’ve got a lot of names here, but I’m focusing on MMA fighters with the big names,” Tsarukyan said. “I don’t want to just wrestle with no names, I want to collect all big names, all the best fighters, so a lot of UFC fighters, good fighters signed. So we’ll see, maybe GSP, they can bring in GSP, I would like to wrestle him.”
Tsarukyan is currently the No. 1 contender at 155 pounds in the UFC, with 11 wins in his past 12 fights for the promotion, including victories over Mauricio Ruffy, Dan Hooker, Charles Oliveira, and Beneil Dariush. Despite having those highlights on his résumé, he’s still proud of dominating Danis to become an RAF champion.
“This for me ranked No. 1 because I won the title,” Tsarukyan said. “So no matter vs. who, he could be not the best wrestler that I wrestled here in this organization, but he has a lot of followers. He can bring a lot of views, so to win this belt it means a lot for me and I’m so excited to defend as much as possible.”
Ahead of their matchup, Tsarukyan and Danis engaged in some now-to-be-expected pre-RAF fight night physicality, and that tension appeared to carry over to the conclusion of their bout when Tsarukyan stepped on Danis.
However, as far as Tsarukyan is concerned, the beef is squashed.
“He’s OK because he knows what’s going to happen if he’s going to do something,” Tsarukyan said. “We were ready for that.”
No matter who is next for Tsarukyan, RAF is committed to pushing him as one of the faces of the promotion. RAF co-founder announced Friday that an event in Tsarukyan’s native Armenia is expected to take place in January, contingent upon Tsarukyan being available to headline.
“Jan. 9,” Bronstein said. “As long as Arman can close.”
“We want to go to Armenia,” he added. “Armenians have been great to RAF. They come, they support us. Arman’s been with us… so we want to go and support it there and host an amazing event.”