“Arman Tsarukyan plans to break RAF’s rules to make sure he hurts Dillon Danis in wrestling match,” Bloody Elbow wrote on X, linking to its report on Tsarukyan’s intentions for their Real American Freestyle bout. The sources don’t include Tsarukyan’s own wording, so treat the framing as Bloody Elbow’s. The timing is awkward, too. Their post went up on Oct. 24, roughly 18 hours after Championship Rounds had already reported the result.
And the result matched the mood. Championship Rounds posted that Tsarukyan beat Danis 10-0 at RAF 14 and then stepped on him after the match. In folkstyle-adjacent terms, a 10-0 score is a shutout. Danis never got on the board against a guy who holds a Master of Sports rank in freestyle wrestling.
The friction had been building for days. At the RAF 14 press conference on Oct. 22, a brawl broke out that Red Corner MMA said involved Danis, Tsarukyan, Khamzat Chimaev and members of both teams. Ariel Helwani posted that one security guard was bleeding and called it an ugly scene. Happy Punch reported a day later that Danis had a brutal time cutting weight for the match. If you’re giving up a wrestling pedigree to the opponent, walking in depleted is a rough way to start.
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Who these two are
Tsarukyan, 29, is 24-3 in MMA and sits at No. 2 in the Knockout Daily lightweight rankings, fighting out of American Top Team. He’s also No. 13 in the UFC’s men’s pound-for-pound rankings as of Sept. 22, and his last MMA fight came on Sept. 19. Taking a grappling match about five weeks later, against a heavier man, says plenty about how much he wanted this one.
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Danis is a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt who earned the rank at 21, is signed to RAF’s cruiserweight division and holds the Misfits MMA light heavyweight title. He has a long history of chaos around big fights. After the melee at UFC 229, he was fined $7,500 and suspended seven months.
The open question is whether RAF does anything about the post-match stomp or the press conference fight. No discipline has been reported in the sources so far. For Tsarukyan, the grappling detour is done, and the No. 2 spot at 155 pounds is still waiting on his next UFC booking.
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