He did what with an alligator?
Arman Tsarukyan is a bad man, there’s no doubting that. The Lightweight from Akhalkalski, Georgia has racked up a super impressive 22-3 record in his professional career and is currently the number one contender in what’s widely believed to be the most talented and exciting division in the UFC after major wins against Charles Oliveira and Beneil Dariush.
Outside of the octagon, Arman is an avid outdoorsman, something he came to love while living in Armenia, but some claims he’s made about a recent hunting trip in the Florida Everglades are raising a few eyebrows…
He made an appearance on Ariel Helwani’s The MMA Hour a few days ago and gave the story behind this photo he posted to his Instagram a few weeks back.
Hunting gators in the Sunshine State is not a new thing and in some parts it’s a must to keep the waterways at least somewhat safe for humans to use, but the method he claims to have used to dispatch this gator is questionable, even with it being a somewhat small one.
We previously heard a story of Bryce Mitchell choking out a deer, but this one is even more wild.
Ariel brought up the photo by asking:
“I saw a photo of you with an alligator around your neck. Is this a real thing and is that an alligator that was alive?”
To which Arman responded:
“I choke him out. I choked him out. Yeah, I catch him, pull him out from the river, choke him, and put on my back.”
Naturally Ariel said he didn’t believe him and Arman said he was going to send him a video, which I’d love to see, for journalistic purposes only of course…
He then gave some more details of the backstory:
“In Florida, I got the license to kill the alligator… you throw the hooks on the river, the alligator got the hook and you gotta pull it. We pull two, me and my friend we pulled one alligator and hopefully he was the 7 or 8 feet, well maybe 6, 7, 8 feet but there is like 12 feet, 13 feet alligators but hopefully he was small. (He weighed) maybe 50, 70 pounds… I choke him then (shoot).
I kill a lot of animals but I didn’t post it because, you know, other animals it’s sad, but alligators it’s okay… They eat people. My friend grabbed his mouth, I was choking… Rear naked choke on his back. I was back mounted and I choke him.”
Okay, so he jumped on an alligator’s back and started choking it, then shot it in the head (which is the normal way of dispatching it).
I mean, there’s a chance they couldn’t get a good angle for the shot and someone had to anchor the gator down, and who better than a top tier MMA fighter, but man that’s insane.
To finish out the story, he let Ariel know what he was going to do with the gator now:
“Boots… Yeah, I’m gonna wear them on my title fight, alligator boots.”
Honestly, I love it. I have a pair of caiman belly boots myself and let me tell you I’ve never felt better than when those puppies are on my feet.
If you’re in the market for your own pair of alligator boots, check out Ariat. They’ve got a killer lineup of gator skin boots, like the Bench Made Bassett Western, along with a ton of other killer products to have you looking and feeling good.
Here’s the entire interview, the alligator conversation starts at the 14:38 mark.
Just goes to show you that these UFC fighters truly are built different.
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