A lightweight title elimination fight between Charles Oliveira and Arman Tsarukyan has been unveiled for UFC 300 in Las Vegas on April 13th.
The 34-year-old Oliveira lost the lightweight title to Islam Makhachev after being submitted by an arm-triangle choke in October of 2022, but has since rebounded with a TKO victory over Beneil Dariush in June of last year.
However, despite that confirming him as the No.1 contender in the division it’s not quite been enough to land him another shot at the title just yet, and so he’ll have to win another big fight first before he can attempt to avenge what was his only loss in his last 13 fights.
The no.4 ranked Tsarukyan currently holds an 8-2 record in the UFC, including his current three-fight winning streak in the space of 12 months against damir Ismagulov, Joaquim Silva and most recently Beneil Dariush, who he KO’d in 64 seconds last month.
Along with the announcement of this fight, Dana White revealed that current lightweight champion Islam Makhachev is currently recovering from an injury and won’t return to face the winner of Oliveira vs. Tsarukyan until the summer, which means that any speculation regarding Makhachev fighting at UFC 300 can now be put to bed.
As such it does still leave huge question marks regarding what the top-of-the-bill fights at UFC 300 will be. Welterweight champion Leon Edwards recently claimed that his next fight would be at UFC 300, but there’s been no official confirmation on that so far.
What we do know for sure is that along with Oliveira vs. Tsarukyan the other three fights set for UFC 300 at this stage are Jiri Prochazka vs. Aleksander Rakic, Aljamain Sterling vs. Calvin Kattar and Bo Nickal vs. Cody Brundage.
