Arman Tsarukyan says the UFC lightweight title is his next fight, and he’s even put a rough date on it. Speaking ahead of Friday’s RAF 14 card in Las Vegas, Tsarukyan said he’s been told he’ll get the next crack at the 155-pound belt, with the fight landing in the first quarter of 2027.
“As I heard, I’m gonna fight for the title next. Beginning of next year,” Tsarukyan said in a clip that made the rounds on X Thursday morning, shared by accounts including Championship Rounds and Dovy. MiddleEasy also reported that Tsarukyan plans to stay at lightweight, which cools some of the chatter about him trying his luck at featherweight.
That chatter had a fresh voice this week. Movsar Evloev, who challenges Alexander Volkanovski for the featherweight title at UFC 333 in Abu Dhabi on Saturday, was asked at media day about a possible Tsarukyan fight. MMA Fighting noted Tsarukyan has teased a cut to 145 in the past, and Evloev (20-0, 10 of those wins in the UFC) was happy to play host.
View post on X
“If Arman wants to come down to featherweight, like I said, it’s my territory,” Evloev said, via a Russian-to-English translation from FREAK.MMA. “Make 145 and we’ll fight, if the UFC wants that fight, of course.”
The man holding the lightweight strap is Justin Gaethje, who beat Ilia Topuria at UFC Freedom 250 on the White House South Lawn on June 14 to become the division’s sole champion. Yahoo Sports’ latest pound-for-pound list has Gaethje ninth and mentions talk that he could retire as champion, along with rumblings that Tsarukyan could be his opponent before that happens. Topuria, per the same rankings, wants a rematch that Gaethje has no interest in giving him.
Before any of that, Tsarukyan has wrestling business. He headlines RAF 14 on Friday against Dillon Danis for the promotion’s inaugural middleweight crossover title, with Khamzat Chimaev facing Robbie Lawler in the co-main. Tsarukyan is 7-1 in RAF and debuted at No. 3 in the promotion’s first crossover pound-for-pound rankings, behind Henry Cejudo and Colby Covington. The one blemish came from Covington, who is 5-0 in RAF and owns the No. 1 spot.
View post on X
Sal’s take
I’d circle the words “As I heard” in red pen, because they are carrying most of the weight in that sentence. Nothing in the sources has the UFC confirming this, and the champion in question is a guy surrounded by retirement talk who has every reason to sit and think about how many more fights he wants. A first-quarter booking would put Gaethje somewhere around seven to nine months removed from the Topuria upset. That’s a reasonable gap, not an alarming one. What bothers me more is how this plays out on a betting sheet. If Gaethje walks away, the matchup everyone has been pricing goes poof and Tsarukyan ends up in a vacant-belt fight against whoever the UFC likes that month. Staying at 155 is the right call, though. Evloev’s invitation sounds generous until you remember the guy is 20-0 and has called that division his territory. Tsarukyan’s next real result comes Friday night against Danis. The lightweight picture should get clearer once someone with a UFC title on his desk says the words out loud.
