‘Insane weight cutting’ to blame for Arman Tsarukyan’s UFC 311 back injury

Arman Tsarukyan was forced to withdraw from his UFC 311 lightweight title fight against Islam Makhachev due to a back injury. But what caused the back injury?

There’s a now-viral clip of Tsarukyan doing an insane drill during a Nina Drama video where he puts his head to the mat and then swings his entire body around on his neck several times. While there’s no way to know if that show-off moment caused his injury, it’s not the kind of exercise someone with back issues should be doing.

And then there’s former UFC heavyweight champion Josh Barnett, who shared what Team Makhachev (and UFC brass) have been suggesting — that this was a botched weight cut that manifested as a locked back.

“You don’t get Arman Tsarukyan having back problems if you don’t have insane weight cutting,” Barnett said on the Ariel Helwani show. “I truly believe that in doing his weight cut, he probably did hit a huge back spasm out of nowhere that completely took him by surprise. And was bad enough that, one, it was obviously going to impact his ability to cut weight, so how is he gonna make the weight class? And, two, could could be severe enough that he wouldn’t feel up to being able to compete the next day.”

“And this all comes from fighting under a ruleset that encourages you to game the system because everyone is doing it and there’s no way around it really.”

Following his first round win over last-minute replacement Renato Moicano, Islam Makhachev repeatedly stated he’d fight anyone who could make the 155 pound weight limit. That was a not so subtle jab at Tsarukyan.

UFC CEO Dana White also implied he didn’t feel like Tsarukyan’s withdrawal was legitimate, because he started off by saying he never wanted to see a fighter compete injured but then said Arman would not get a title shot upon his return.

“Yeah, I saw the same,” Tsarukyan said on Helwani’s show. “Maybe a doctor said, ‘He could fight,’ I don’t know. But, like, how? I was training so hard. I was cutting my weight. I was riding, like, 8 weeks. And on my mind, if I step in the cage, I make a lot of money, I wanted to be on this fight more than everybody. You know? Even if we lose, but lose good, I could make good money. But I couldn’t walk.”

“Wednesday after training, I went to sleep, and I started to feel my lower back, and I couldn’t sleep all night and thought something happened. Took some painkiller, but it didn’t help. The next day, I thought it’s going to be good, and after [the] press conference, I’m going to start my weight cut. And when I started my weight cut, I was doing [the] bike, and like, that moment, my back was stuck, and I couldn’t move.”

Whatever caused the injury, the result is the same: Tsarukyan will have to prove he can still get through a weight cut and step into the cage healthy enough to win against a top lightweight contender.