Arman Tsarukyan: the explosive Armenian fireball who lit up cages from undercard journeys…
heard about tsarukyan’s early days like everyone else, but the first time i saw him was in a dusty little room in some godforsaken gym up north where a mate had set up a pirated stream on an old telly while we all had cans of warm beer and argued about which kid in manchester was gonna drop someone tonight
there was this kid — couldn’t have been older than 20 — bouncing around like he was on springs, talking absolute nonsense in armenian between rounds to his corner, hands going everywhere, then boom — left hand catches this poor lad flush on the button and it was all over before anyone even clapped
we all went silent for a second, then my mate just goes “fuck me, what was that?” and i swear to god one of the lads spilled his beer laughing so hard he nearly decked the bloke next to him
tsarukyan back then wasn’t a fighter, not like the ones who box clever from bell to bell — he was a force of nature, pure raw energy with a grin like he knew he was already ten steps ahead
Remember when the grass was greener 🌱
Saw that little tornado of Armenian fury on a busted-up laptop in a Portakabin behind my building site during my dinner break, mate — still got concrete dust under my nails when the screen lit up and boom, left hand again, man just collapsed like a sack of spuds 🤬🔥 next to me some Polish kid I'd hired for the day just dropped his sarnie mid-bite and screamed “JESUS CHRIST!” so loud I thought the Health & Safety rep was coming over ah well, nowt to do
Heart with the team, head on pause.
what do you lot reckon made those early Tsarukyan fights so watchable then? for me it wasn’t just the knockouts, it was the sheer cheek of the lad, the way he’d walk back to his corner talking away like he’d just nicked the bloke’s wallet and nicked off scot free. remember one of his first proper TV cards on an early bellator card in some godforsaken european warehouse venue — they’d stuck a dude behind the cage who could barely speak more than two words of english doing crowd control, and Tsarukyan just leaned over to this poor sod mid-fight, patted him on the shoulder like he was his long lost cousin from yerevan, grinned in that mad way of his, and then went straight back to business? the poor lad nearly fainted mid-eye-gouging session, bless him. we all just sat there in the cheap seats with our lucozade bottles thinking “where did this lunatic come from and how do we get tickets to his next carnival?”
Seen it all, lads.
Dude was so hyped in those early days he treated every opponent like his long-lost Armenian cousin who owed him money 😂🤣💸 remember watching that wild regional show in Yerevan where the ref literally had to shove him off one poor bloke because he wouldn’t stop hugging after the KO? whole ring looked like a family reunion gone nuclear… next thing you know the loser’s wiping tears (actual tears) and Tsarukyan’s over there patting his back like “all good mate, same time next year!”
Only serious one here — barely.