Arman Tsarukyan’s manager has revealed that they rejected an offer to rematch Islam Makhachev for the UFC lightweight title just after defeating Oliveira.
Whilst Max Holloway and Alex Pereira understandably stole the headlines at UFC 300, the event has provided a new lightweight title contender in the form of Arman Tsarukyan.
Arman Tsarukyan earns the biggest win of his career at UF 300
Arman Tsarukyan earned the biggest win of his professional MMA career to date at UFC 300 this past weekend in Las Vegas as he defeated former lightweight champion Charles Oliveira via a split decision.
After surviving an early guillotine attempt, Tsarukyan was able to squeak out the latter stages of the bout thanks to his superior wrestling and control time – although aside from several slashing elbows that cut Oliveira to stain the Brazilian’s bleach-blonde hair crimson, the surging contender failed to land many meaningful blows.
Yet with the split-decision victory over such a household name, Tsarukyan has now officially entered the title picture with his manager sharing that in the aftermath of UFC 300, their team actually rejected an official fight offer for one key reason.
Tsarukyan’s manager reveals they rejected UFC title shot offer
Speaking to Match TV, a Russian MMA outlet, Arman Tsarukyan’s manager Vadim Tikhomirov revealed that the UFC had offered them the lightweight title fight only just after he exited the cage at UFC 300.
“The fight with Islam [Makhachev] on June 1 was offered to us – this happened immediately after the fight [against Charles Oliveira].”
However, Tsarukyan and his team opted to reject the offer to rematch Islam Makhachev at UFC 302 for one simple reason: Timing, with the PPV scheduled to go down in just a few weeks’ time on June 1 from the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey.
“Well, before the fight there was an understanding that there was no point in going into a title fight with Islam on short notice, especially since the position of the #1 ranked contender had already been achieved. And there was an understanding that now, Islam and Poirier would fight on June 1, then Arman would fight the winner.”
Tikhomirov also shared how the entire title picture was still up in the air even as Max Holloway delivered the greatest finish in UFC history in the BMF title fight:
“If you noticed, during the press conference Dana White was given this note [with the announcements] because it was all being decided at that moment [behind the scenes].”
Tsarukyan’s manager offers key advice over crowd incident
Even before the fight with Charles Oliveira began, Tsarukyan was making headlines as the lightweight contender was filmed throwing a punch towards a fan in the Las Vegas crowd during his walk-out.
At the post-fight press conference, both Dana White and Tsarukyan reacted to the incident with White stating “I’m sure we’re probably going to get sued but we’ll deal with that on Monday.”
Tikhomirov was also asked about the incident by Match TV, with the manager noting that he was “surprised” by both the fan grabbing Arman, and his fighter’s reaction:
“It’s unnecessary stuff in general. Maybe, to some extent, it influenced the very tumultuous start of the fight. We talked about it after the fight, but Arman insisted that he had done everything right.”
The veteran manager imparted some words of wisdom on the young Armenian, with such incidents having the potential to have wide-reaching consequences for both his career and the UFC as a promotion:
“For my part, I said that if people see you being provoked, they will provoke you even more. You can’t lose your focus before a fight. You have to leave these things aside. And in general, the level is not the right level to be distracted by such things.”
With the victory at UFC 300, Arman Tsarukyan improved his professional MMA record to 22-3.