UFC lightweight ranking number four Arman Tsarukyan, who will face Charles Oliveira in his next fight, explained why he promises to knock out his compatriot Islam Makhachev, the division’s current champion, in almost all interviews with Western media.
“The confidence is there, of course, but you still have to say things to attract attention and people talk about it,” the Russian said in an interview with the channel “Ushataika”. “I’m doing this so that they will give me a fight with him. If I don’t say anything, nobody will give me anything, and they wouldn’t give me Charles Oliveira either if I sat there and kept quiet. They wouldn’t give me the main fights if I didn’t talk nonsense in English like they like to do”
“Of course, I wish the UFC was like the PFL – you know there’s a grand prix, eight fighters, and if you’re the best, you don’t have to talk and say anything. You come in, you fight, you make money, you leave. And you don’t have to croak and tell me what round you’re knocking out in. But we have to – to get paid the big money, we have to talk.”
At the same time, Tsarukyan is convinced that Makhachev is much worse at holding a punch than former division champion Khabib Nurmagomedov.
“Khabib’s grip is much more powerful – he has never fallen, he has never been knocked down. Islam has been both knocked out and knocked down, so his grip is not like Khabib’s.”
Recall that the fight between Arman Tsarukyan and Charles Oliveira will take place on April 13 at UFC 300 in Las Vegas, and the winner of this confrontation will be the main candidate for a fight with Islam Makhachev.
Source: https://fighttime.ru/news/item/33835-arman-tsarukyan-ob-yasnil-slova-v-adres-islama-makhacheva.html?rand=19907
