Arman Tsarukyan didn't waste any time cashing in on his UFC 331 performance. The number two ranked lightweight finished Mauricio Ruffy with an elbow in the first round, stopping him at 4:56, and he's already turning his attention to the men above him.

According to LowKick MMA, Tsarukyan has confirmed that the UFC has started working on making his next fight a lightweight title bout.

The numbers back up the idea that this would be a razor thin matchup. Tsarukyan sits at a 1611 Elo rating built over five bouts in our tracker, while Gaethje checks in at 1579 across six. That's a gap, but not a massive one, and it lines up with a champion who has been in wars every time out against a challenger who just blew through a ranked opponent in under five minutes.

Not everyone is sold on Tsarukyan's stock rising, though. Paddy Pimblett, ranked fifth at lightweight, gave him credit for the finishing elbow but was otherwise unimpressed, saying Tsarukyan's wrestling isn't as good as he thinks it is. Pimblett is coming off his own finish, a first round D'Arce choke of Benoit Saint Denis in July.

Elsewhere, Demetrious Johnson pointed out that Tsarukyan put a lesson from a training session between the two of them to good use in the Ruffy finish, adding another layer to how that elbow came together.

Fans have been buzzing about the finish and the callout all week, with the weekly r/MMA recap thread for the UFC 331 stretch drawing plenty of discussion on where Tsarukyan goes from here.