Mauricio Ruffy backed to upset Arman Tsarukyan

Ruffy’s teams believe improved takedown defense can make the difference

Mauricio Ruffy heads into the biggest fight of his career as a clear underdog, but his former and current teams are firmly convinced that he has what it takes to pull off a major upset.

Mauricio Ruffy will face Arman Tsarukyan in the co-main event of the upcoming UFC event. His former coach, Pablo Sucupira, and his new teammate, Alexander Volkanovski, see the fight as the perfect opportunity to make a huge statement. Sucupira believes that people’s opinions are too heavily influenced by Mauricio Ruffy’s loss to Benoît Saint Denis. In that fight, the Brazilian was taken down and the bout was stopped early. However, his coach emphasizes that this fight was an absolute exception and that since then, they’ve been actively working on takedown defense, which has prevented even contenders like Michael Chandler from taking Mauricio Ruffy down.

“I don’t just think Ruffy is going to win; I think he’s going to send a message by knocking Arman out. Michael Chandler and [Rafael] Fiziev also tried, but nobody was able to take him down”

Sucupira told Sherdog.

Alexander Volkanovski also praised Mauricio Ruffy’s new defense. He says the Brazilian is now on a different level, and that this is especially important against fighters like Arman Tsarukyan. However, he’s convinced that Mauricio Ruffy will hold his own and then come out on top with his strong striking. So we’ll just have to wait and see what’s in store for us there. But it could very well turn out to be a much more exciting matchup than we can even imagine. What do you think?

I hope it turns out to be an exciting matchup. If all of this is true, and Mauricio Ruffy has really been actively working on his past mistakes, especially in his takedown defense, it could get really exciting.