Volkanovski Eyes a Lightweight Jump: Arman Tsarukyan for the Belt

Alexander Volkanovski is already the UFC featherweight champion at 29-4, and he's not interested in treading water. The Australian says that if he ever holds the lightweight belt, there's exactly one name he wants across from him: Arman Tsarukyan, the division's #2 contender. His words were blunt — if the title were his and Justin Gaethje passed on the matchup, he'd take Tsarukyan 100 percent.

That's a loaded callout. Tsarukyan is 24-3 with six submissions and ten knockouts, and he's coming off a first-round TKO of Mauricio Ruffy. He's widely considered one of the best grapplers in the promotion. Volkanovski, fresh off a second-round stoppage of Movsar Evloev, isn't pretending otherwise — he just doesn't think it matters.

No Fear of the Mat

Volkanovski's pitch leans entirely on his track record against wrestlers. He argued that everyone already knows how he handles grapplers, and that Tsarukyan won't be able to hold him down. The plan, in his telling, is simple: get back up, keep it standing, and turn a grappling chess match into a firefight.

There's some logic in that confidence. Of Volkanovski's 29 wins, only three come by submission — this is a fighter who has built a career on takedown defense, scrambles and volume striking. He's spent years dragging bigger, stronger wrestlers into deep-water boxing matches and winning the exchanges.

He also gave Tsarukyan his due on the feet, calling the standup element a reason the fight would be fun rather than a liability. Volkanovski said he feels like he's starting to figure things out again, which reads as a man eyeing a second title after reclaiming his first.

For now, it's a hypothetical stacked on a hypothetical — Volkanovski doesn't hold lightweight gold, and a move up isn't booked. But the message landed: the featherweight king sees Tsarukyan not as a problem to avoid, but as the exact fight worth chasing two divisions deep.