“Charles Oliveira couldn’t submit me – how can Dan Hooker submit me?” Arman Tsarukyan Laughs Off Submission Attempts
After previous in-cage dealings with Charles Oliveira, the submission grappling threats of Dan Hooker did not resonate as intimidating to Arman Tsarukyan at UFC Qatar. On November 22nd, Tsarukyan put together a performance that reignited lightweight title shot talks around him as he was able to submit Hooker in the second stanza of their recent UFC Fight Night main event bout.
There were some moments in the contest, though, where Hooker looked to threaten with submissions when things got to the ground, and the victorious UFC Qatar main event fighter was asked about those moments after the bout. Touching on these sequences with Hooker in their fight as he broke things down in the post-fight press conference, Tsarukyan said,
Charles Oliveira couldn’t submit me – how can Hooker submit me? It’s just spending energy. It doesn’t make sense. With me, it’s probably better to defend the legs. You can defend your leg, or you’ve got to go for submission, but I didn’t feel anything from those attempts.”
Charles Oliveira finds himself in a simmering feud with an ex-rival
Charles Oliveira has found himself in a bit of remergent rivalry with a former opponent, but the ex-adversary is not Arman Tsarukyan himself. Since Oliveira’s recent win at UFC Rio over Mateusz Gamrot, the Brazilian mixed martial artist has been calling for a rematch against Holloway, with the two initially fighting in Canada around a decade or so ago.
The BMF champion seems intrigued also with the notion of booking that bout, and Holloway seemed to also disagree about where both are positioned in the division now. ‘Blessed’ recently expressed that when speaking to X account @KoreanZombieMMA as Holloway seemed perplexed by how he was long ranked above Oliveira only for Charles to inexplicably be bumped over Holloway after ‘do Bronx’ had bested the lower-ranked Gamrot.
While Holloway seemed to indicate some understandable frustrations as to how the UFC rankings worked, the former UFC featherweight champion also gave Oliveira his proper due. Max Holloway mentioned how the former UFC lightweight champion would be considered a BMF by many and that a future fight between the two for that strap would definitely make sense.
