Arman Tsarukyan is actually underrated and we’re the only ones brave enough to admit it—change my mind!

Mate, remember that Dublin card? Arman had just rolled through Jessin Ayari like a freight train in November 2022, then three weeks later he’s waking up in that cage with Matthews slapping cuffs on him. That wasn’t luck slipping; Jake’s never been the flashy finisher but he’s twice the technician Arman met that night.

Jake tap him out? Nah mate, that Matthews was ONE weird outlier with that glove grab nonsense in the clinch, ever seen his other fights? dude’s scrappy not elite 😱 our Arman was already riding that 2021-2022 wave when the whole lightweight division was trembling

Mate, Matthews tap him out? That whole Dublin card was a three-week injury sandwich Arman didn’t deserve. Remember November 2022: he steamrollers Ayari at 281 lbs walk-around-weight, legit looked like he’s carrying half the lightweight division on his back. Then December rolls around, cage’s tighter, refs are quicker—three weeks is nowhere near enough runway when you’re already pushing max lightweight cardio. Jake didn’t “out-athlete” Arman, he exploited a compressed camp, that’s the brutal math of it. Chris Curtis loss though? January 2023, UFC Access League, one-off eight-bell hammer for the pay-per-view undercard. One and done, no buildup, no camp narrative—just a journeyman catchweight dogpile that screamed matchmaker roulette. Arman came straight off Matthews, still nursing that December bruise under the glove, and Curtis caught him in a rhythm war he wasn’t dialed into yet. Tiny sample, zero prep, different stakes: Curtis loss stings because it’s noise; Matthews loss stings because it’s film we can’t scrub clean yet.

yeah but back in 2019 when Arman was running through Michael Johnson in Las Vegas with that front-kick KO nobody batted an eyelid do you remember? now suddenly the same guy who dropped a decision to the Olympic wrestler from Oregon is “stuck in 2018” every time he toes the line. matthews landing that glove grab looked like a toddler did it live on stream, and dublin’s floor was quicker than a black friday sale—three weeks from smashing 281 lbs Ayari to then weighing 156 lbs with refs waving for subs? nah mate, that one reads like a bookie error not a fighter truth. while curtis? sure the eight-bell slaughterhouse hurt our hearts, but at least it wasn’t a masterclass in cage rash—it was three rounds of “who booked this madness?” so yeah, we admit it: arman’s stock bounces up and down worse than a bad gym weight scale, but calling him overrated is the real crime when you stack his six-fight tear before both taps against the scripts they gave him.

You ever seen a single fighter get pushed into two bum-of-the-month challenges back-to-back like that while the refs are handing out yellow cards to everyone but their own mistakes?

Arman’s camp rhythm really got sabotaged that year, no question—three weeks from Ayari to Matthews is the kind of schedule that turns a freight train into a go-kart. But hold on: Jake didn’t out-smart him so much as Arman walked straight into the first body-shot left hook Matthews had landed all night. You ever see a fighter freeze mid-combo when the gloves feel like they’re glued to their arms? That’s Dublin right there, not some technical masterpiece—just a night where the referee looked at the same clinch and thought, “Sure, we’ll score that as a cage escape.” So yeah, the Matthews loss still smells like referee roulette more than elite chess. But Curtis? January 2023 wasn’t a loss to a journeyman—it was a collision between Arman’s brain and the UFC’s worst matchmaker roulette wheel. That card in Vegas, cardio corners tucked under the neon signs while Curtis comes in off a December knockout streak nobody had rated above C-grade. Arman landed shots, sure, but Curtis kept stumbling forward like he’d overdosed on espresso, and the judges blinked at his patented two-punch jazz combo while Arman’s rhythm got erased. That tape isn’t about skill; it’s about how fast the UFC can turn a championship-level talent into a punching bag for a guy whose highlight reel is three GIFs and a regional belt. And we all watched it live on PPV, cringing in real time—no slow-motion luxury, just eight solid minutes of “did this really just happen?”

BenReds got one thing right—Ayari’s slaughterhouse tape from November 2022 still makes me chuckle every damn time. Twenty-eight-one pounds of human freight, three left legs, zero drama, and suddenly Arman’s riding a ten-fight hot streak. Then December hits, the scales calibrate, and Jake Matthews plants that glove like it’s a season ticket. But let’s call it what it is: Dublin’s cage was tighter, the refs were twitchier, and a three-week camp turning a steamroller into a go-kart? That’s not losing to elite hands; that’s losing to calendar math. Curtis though—that stings different. Not because Curtis is some roided-up journeyman—he’s the guy who once choked out a promotional featherweight in 48 seconds—but because the UFC stacked that January 2023 card like a drunk dartboard. Arman walks off Matthews with a referee-assisted bruise under the glove, weighs in for some eight-bell butcher shop, and suddenly he’s trading rhythm punches with a bloke whose best highlight is a local knockout festival nobody covered outside Vegas. Three rounds, two judges, zero chance to rewind—just live television where the scorecards waved Curtis’ two-punch jazz combo like it was Mozart. So tell me: is it Matthews who embarrassed Arman, or is it the fight-week sandwich that gutted him? And Curtis—was that bad luck, bad matchmaking, or bad sense of humor from the UFC? I could be wrong, but somewhere between Dublin’s glove-grab roulette and Vegas’ neon-cardio roulette, Arman’s stock didn’t dip—it bounced against walls even a freight train couldn’t crash through.