Anthony Pettis was supposed to make his Real American Freestyle debut against Donald Cerrone. Instead he’ll make it against Arman Tsarukyan, with a belt on the line. RAF announced Tuesday that Pettis will challenge Tsarukyan for the RAF middleweight crossover title in the main event of RAF 15 on Nov. 28 at NOW Arena in Chicago, as MMA Fighting reported.
The shuffle moves a few pieces at once. Henry Cejudo vs. Song Yadong, which had been set to headline the card, drops to the co-main slot. Cerrone is off RAF 15 entirely, according to MMA Fighting, and no new date or opponent for him was mentioned.
Tsarukyan is barely a week removed from winning the vacant title. At RAF 14 in Las Vegas this past weekend, he took Dillon Danis apart by tech fall, which in freestyle means he built a big enough points lead that the referee stopped it. Most people would take a vacation after that. Tsarukyan has two more matches booked inside a month. MMA Fighting confirmed he’s still wrestling Neiman Gracie in a non-title bout at RAF Abu Dhabi on Nov. 14, which leaves him exactly 14 days between that match and the Pettis defense in Chicago.
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Pettis, the former UFC lightweight champion, is coming in from a very different place. He has never competed in freestyle wrestling, and he hasn’t competed in any combat sport since 2024. That was a boxing match against Chris Avila, which Pettis lost by unanimous decision.
What else Tsarukyan has going on
The RAF run hasn’t pulled Tsarukyan’s attention away from the UFC lightweight title. In an interview with Helen Yee, he was asked about Alexander Volkanovski, who has floated moving up to lightweight to face Justin Gaethje in a retirement fight. Tsarukyan didn’t hedge. “Yeah, I would fight him. He’s old, bad chin. He’s a tough opponent, but he’s a little bit old now. For me, it’s a perfect fight,” he said. Volkanovski has said he’d retire after a Gaethje fight, win or lose, so that matchup lives mostly in Tsarukyan’s head for now.
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He also spent last weekend in Barcelona, where he turned up at the Barcelona vs. Real Madrid match alongside Khabib Nurmagomedov, according to posts circulating on X. That’s a decent way to celebrate a title win, and probably a better one than a cut weight class’s worth of sparring.
Quick take
On paper this is a mismatch, and I don’t think anyone at RAF would seriously argue otherwise. Tsarukyan is a high-level grappler who just ended a match early against a guy with real jiu-jitsu credentials, and Pettis will be wrestling his first freestyle match ever, at 2024’s level of activity, against him. What Pettis brings is the name, the Chicago crowd and a willingness to take a hard assignment when an easier one was already on the table, and I respect that more than I can predict a path for him. The thing I’d actually watch is Abu Dhabi on Nov. 14. If Neiman Gracie makes Tsarukyan work for six minutes, the Chicago defense two weeks later gets a lot more interesting than the odds will say.
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