Arman Tsarukyan continues to be left out of the UFC Lightweight title picture despite being the No.1 contender, and he believes that’s because the promotion are trying to lay out the easiest possible path for Paddy Pimblett to become a champion.

Tsarukyan vented his frustration after dominating his wrestling match with former two-time PFL tournament champion Lance Palmer at the RFA 5 event on Saturday night.

“Everybody knows, Paddy Pimblett, they want to make him a champion because it’s his chance to be a champion,” Tsarukyan told reporters. “They know if they’re going to put me against him, he’s going to lose and the star is going to be gone. [Justin] Gaethje is easy money for him. He’s old, he has maybe one or two fights left.

“So that’s why they give him interim title because he’s not going to be a real champion, because there’s Ilia Topuria and I never think he can beat Ilia Topuria.”

There’s no love loss between himself and Pimblett, who stated that he hoped his rival would get hurt in his wrestling match at the weekend, but Tsarukyan believes that’s just further evidence that ‘The Baddy’ is afraid to face him in the Octagon.

“Yeah, he wants me to get hurt because I’m not going to fight him,” Tsarukyan said. “I’m a nightmare for him and he knows that if we’re going to fight, he’s going to lose. He’s going to try not to fight me his whole life.

“I hope that Justin Gaethje is going to knock him out and send him back to England and he can eat his—I don’t know what he’s eating there—chicken or whatever.”

Though Tsarukyan is frustrated with his repeated snubs from the UFC in recent times it is worth noting that he was scheduled to fight Islam Makhachev for the lightweight title at UFC 311 a year ago, only to withdraw a day before the event after claiming he’d been injured while cutting weight.

The UFC brass were unhappy with that and appear to have held it against him since, and he now admits that headbutting Dan Hooker during a pre-fight staredown prior to their fight back in November may have given them another excuse not to pitch him into a title fight next.

“It’s just my guess, I’m seeing from interviews, what my manager says to me, from that I decided because of that, I think,” Tsarukyan said of his suspicions that he’s not in the UFC’s good books. “In person, I didn’t talk to Dana or [UFC executive] Hunter [Campbell] about that.

“I’ve got to go to Vegas and talk to them. We’ll see what they say, but it’s probably the headbutt, pull out from the title fight, yeah.”