Arman Tsarukyan needed less than five minutes to make his case. In the UFC 331 co-main event in Los Angeles, the number two ranked lightweight knocked out number seven Mauricio Ruffy with an elbow at 4:56 of the first round, and both ESPN and Sherdog framed it the same way: this was Tsarukyan cementing himself as the top contender at 155 pounds.

The numbers back up the eye test. Tsarukyan sits at a 1611 Elo rating built from five bouts, comfortably above Ruffy's 1571 across seven fights.

Tsarukyan isn't interested in waiting for his reward. Speaking with Bloody Elbow, he said he wants to fight again as soon as December, adding, 'I don't have any injuries, I'm healthy, if they told me December that would be great. I could do camp in October and November, I need one or two weeks to rest so I'm ready. Tsarukyan accused Gaethje of avoiding him entirely, saying, 'Justin Gaethje never says my name, he's scared and he knows I'm coming, he wanted Ruffy to knock me out because he's trying to avoid me and trying to call out Ilia Topuria or he's asking for 15 million dollars to fight me or he'll retire.' He went further, claiming Gaethje would rather duck him than fight for real, saying the champ will 'play around' but never actually agree to face him or else hand the belt over to a younger contender.

Dana White seemed thrilled with the performance regardless of the drama, telling Bloody Elbow that after some rocky moments with Tsarukyan in the past, "to go in and perform the way he did tonight... incredible."