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As lightweight contender Arman Tsarukyan prepares for his return at UFC 300 against former champion Charles Oliveira on April 13, the idea that he’s one step away from securing a rematch against Islam Makhachev remains on the front of his mine.

“It’s not a maybe, it’s 100%,” Tsarukyan told “Morning Kombat” this week. “After this fight, I’m going to be contender No. 1 for the title. That’s it.”

Tsarukyan (21-3) enters having won eight of his last nine bouts since a memorable UFC debut loss in 2019 in a competitive decision to Makhachev (25-1), some three years before the sport’s current pound-for-pound king went on to claim the vacant lightweight title from Oliveira at UFC 280.

It’s Tsarukyan’s most recent performances amid a three-fight win streak that began after his disputed 2022 decision defeat to Mateusz Gamrot that has everyone buzzing about the muscular native of Georgia, who proudly represents his Armenian culture. Tsarukyan has knocked out his last two opponents, including a brutal finish of Beneil Dariush in December to secure the Oliveira fight.

So, how does Tsaurkyan feel about Makhachev’s recent comments that his preference is to defend his title against former interim titleholder Dustin Poirier, who stopped red-hot contender Benoit Saint Denis at UFC 299 earlier this month?

“I feel like Islam wants to avoid us,” Tsarukyan said. “He feels like I’m going to win and, for him, it’s better to fight Poirier than me. I am more of a danger for him because I know wrestling. Maybe he can make more money with Dustin. It’s probably because of that, he’s more interested. Anyway, for me it doesn’t matter. I’m just focused on Charles Oliveira because he is one of the best in our division. I have to focus on him. This is the biggest fight for me.”

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Tsarukyan said that although he respects Poirier, his teammate at American Top Team in south Florida, he’s excited to see the division finally turn over to allow the next generation to take their shot.

“I was supporting Dustin Poirier [against Saint Denis,] I wanted him to win and I was super happy,” Tsaurkyan said. “But now, all the top five are still here and just me. I am one of the youngest and new ones because of [Michael] Chandler, Poirier, [Justin] Gaethje, Oliveira, Islam. The top five is still there but I’m there also. I want to change those names and want to become No. 1 and become champ.”

One thing Tsarukyan is most confident about is how much he has grown since the Makhachev loss, when the two took turns reversing position in a grappling showcase that ended in Makhachev winning by scores of 30-27 (twice) and 29-28.

“It [feels] like one year ago but it’s almost five years ago,” Tsarukyan said. “I was super young and it was my first fight [in the UFC]. I can’t wait to fight again with Islam Makhachev. Everybody knows it will be me or Oliveira that will fight Islam Makhachev next. It’s a No. 1 contender fight so definitely one of us will fight for the title.”

Conor McGregor insists his return to mixed martial arts is imminent. McGregor, during a press tour for his new movie “Road House,” claimed this week that he’s been in communication with UFC for a fight against Michael Chandler sometime this summer.

“We got confirmation a few days ago that it’s all systems go,” McGregor told ESPN on Tuesday.

UFC fans have lost confidence in the fight materializing thanks to start-and-stop efforts by McGregor and Chandler to drum up interest. Chandler further complicated the situation with what seemed to be a sarcastic tweet.

“I’m not sure I’ll be ready for a summer fight…this came out of the blue,” Chandler wrote on Tuesday. “I’ve been out of the loop. Can y’all ask Dana [White] to confirm this?”

But when a journalist wrote, “The amount of people taking this tweet seriously is… wow,” Chandler replied, “Haha! Right?”

Hahah! Right?

— Michael Chandler (@MikeChandlerMMA) March 20, 2024
McGregor — who has fought as low as featherweight — previously posed a middleweight fight against Chandler but said he was teasing his potential opponent. McGregor did not specify a date, event or weight class for the big fight but claimed he’s been preparing for a long time.

“I had [my training] camp in Dubai [months ago], I had a camp in Cannes,” McGregor said. “I was preparing, and then I was kind of getting nothing back. And then other things came up and I kind of dipped out. But now, it’s on. So, there’s no messing now. I cannot dip out now.”

McGregor also took a shot at Chandler who called him out on the Feb. 19 episode of WWE Raw.

“Shut up, Michael, you f—ing imbecile,” McGregor said. “The man doesn’t shut up. I seen him on ‘Raw.’ I like Mike — I’m going to bust him up. I’m going to bust Mike up, yeah? If I say it, I do it. … If I say it, it gets done. Put that on my stone.”

McGregor vs. Chandler will be a spectacle should it materialize but the build has overstayed its welcome. The fight was first presented to fans when UFC president White announced “The Ultimate Fighter” season 31 in February 2023. The fight has yet to be formally announced 13 months later. McGregor claimed in January the fight would take place at UFC International Fight Week on June 29 before the annual event was announced by the promotion. White previously denied the fight was in the works for that weekend. UFC 303 will be the marquee event at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

McGregor revealed he had two fights left on his UFC contract. A trilogy fight against Nate Diaz at the promotion’s Mexican Independence Day event at The Sphere is a top priority.

“I think that’s an absolute perfection of a fight.

“Do we sign a new deal?” McGregor said of the UFC. “Do I go? Am I a free agent? I love the UFC dearly. My heart is in the UFC — my catalogue, my life. I love everyone in the company and all the fighters and all the events and all the shows and cards. I wish to continue this. How that looks, I have no clue.”

Conor McGregor and Jake Gyllenhaal got into some method acting by mistake on the set of the “Road House” remake.

Gyllenhaal and McGregor co-star in the reimagining of the 1989 action movie. Gyllenhaal stars as a former UFC middleweight who comes to blows with various antagonists, including one portrayed by McGregor in his feature film debut. Gyllenhaal revealed this week that McGregor caught him with an errant punch while choreographing one of several fight scenes between them.

“We had, actually, by mistake, he clocked me in the face,” Gyllenhaal told “The Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon. “We would do a take where we were like fighting, and fake fighting, fake fighting, and then we’d go watch the monitor to see it back, to see what worked, and he was always great with me. He would show me, tell me to do things, and like, ‘Oh, you know, turn your head, move a little bit more this way to try and make it look more real,’ and it was late because we shot a lot of these fight scenes at night.

“So it was like 3 a.m., and he was talking to me really close, and he was like, ‘Yeah, like that left hook looks good, but then when you do it like, boom [showing fake punch],’ and he hit me by mistake. It was almost like … and I was like, ‘Oh!’ And he was like, ‘Oh!'”

Gyllenhaal was admittedly nervous about working with the former two-division UFC champion.

“When I got word that he was going to be doing it, I was super psyched, because they chased him for a long time to play the part,” Gyllenhaal said. “But then I got totally terrified and I thought, ‘Oh God, I actually have to fake fight this guy and I got to look like I can.’

“I stay in pretty good shape, but we trained for two months pretty hard — grappling, and a lot of MMA.”

The “Road House” remake debuted at SXSW on March 8 ahead of its March 21 premiere on Amazon Prime Video.

The class action lawsuits against the UFC that many believed would shake the foundation of the business of mixed martial arts appear to be coming to a close. It was announced on Wednesday that the two class action antitrust suits (Le vs. Zuffa and Johnson vs. Zuffa) had reached a settlement of $335 million.

That $335 million amount will be split among the fighters who participated in UFC fights during periods covering both suits — Le vs. Zuffa covering 2010 to 2017 and Johnson vs. Zuffa covering the period after 2017 — after any fees are paid to the plaintiffs’ lawyers. Initially filed as five separate lawsuits between December 2014 and March 2015, the cases were merged into the Le vs. Zuffa case, with the Johnson vs. Zuffa case being filed in 2021.

“On March 13, 2024, TKO reached an agreement to settle all claims asserted in both class action lawsuits (Le and Johnson) for an aggregate amount of $335 million payable by the Company and its subsidiaries in installments over an agreed-upon period of time,” a TKO statement to the SEC reads. “The terms will be memorialized in a long form agreement and then submitted to the court for approval. The Company anticipates that the settlement amount will be deductible for tax purposes.”

The antitrust suits, which claimed the UFC used practices that stifled fighter ability to negotiate with other promotions and locked fighters into restrictive contracts, which combined to suppress fighter pay, were seeking up to $1.6 billion in damages, meaning the UFC and parent company TKO will likely see a $335 million settlement as a major victory, especially if the settlement came with no meaningful changes to the structure of UFC contracts moving forward.

“We are pleased with the settlement and will disclose more when we file with the court in 45-60 days,” a tweet from the Mixed Martial Arts Fighters Association read.

We are pleased with the settlement and will disclose more when we file with the Court in 45-60 days.

We Love All of these guys!

👊 pic.twitter.com/jetH24vUQ1

— MMAFA (@MMAFA) March 20, 2024
TKO Group Holdings stock shot up nearly five and a half points after news of the settlement broke.

The proposed settlement still must be approved by the court. Prior to news of the settlement, the next stage in the trial was set for April 15.

“We are pleased to have reached an agreement to settle all claims asserted in both the Le and Johnson class-action lawsuits, bringing litigation to a close and benefitting all parties,” A UFC statement acquired by reporter Kevin Iole said. “The final terms of the settlement will be submitted to the court of approval.”

Ronda Rousey reached the pinnacle in UFC and WWE but had an unceremonious exit from both organizations. It turns out an undisclosed history of concussions abruptly ended her run with each promotion.

The former UFC women’s bantamweight champion left the promotion in 2016 following consecutive knockout losses to Holly Holm and Amanda Nunes. Her swift split from mixed martial arts and dismissive attitude towards her UFC tenure soured fans who perceived her as bitter. According to Rousey, it was her “concussion history” predating her MMA run that had her tight-lipped.

“I had to keep [it] secret for years, so I would be able to continue to compete and perform,” Rousey told fans on Instagram Live while teasing content from her upcoming memoir, Our Fight.

“I think that there was just so much to [that Holm loss], that I couldn’t talk about it in the form of like an interview or an article or anything like that, or there would be several filters between my words and people reading it. So much had to do with having so many concussions when I was in judo before I even got into MMA, I couldn’t talk about it at all when I was doing MMA. Because it would literally put a target on my head, and I might not have been allowed to compete any further.”

Rousey’s concussions played a direct role in ending her legendary MMA career.

“That’s basically why I had to retire,” Rousey said.

Rousey kept the concussions under wraps even after she retired from combat sports. It was a calculated risk to afford her a second high-profile career. Rousey made sporadic appearances for WWE starting in 2014 and signed onto the company full-time in 2017. Her time in professional wrestling led to four championship reigns, becoming the eighth women’s triple crown champion and winning the 2022 women’s Royal Rumble match.

“Same thing with WWE,” Rousey said. “They have a complicated history with their performers getting concussions, and it would be a bad look on them. So I felt like I really couldn’t talk about it at all. So I feel like this [is the] long form that I would be able to adequately address it.”

Rousey had a quiet departure from WWE after losing an “MMA Rules” match to her longtime friend and fellow UFC alum Shayna Baszler at SummerSlam in 2023. She subsequently wrestled two matches elsewhere — including one in Ring of Honor — teaming with MMA fighter-turned-pro wrestler Marina Shafir. Rousey subsequently retired for the second time.

“A really hard decision to understand, but one that my body really made for me,” Rousey said. “I feel like this is the only way to really get that across in the best, most complete way that it’s not just a tweet and a headline short.”

Rousey’s autobiography Our Fight will be released on April 2.

Bellator MMA returns to Belfast on Friday for the promotion’s first event since being acquired by Professional Fighters League. Bellator 302 is the first Bellator event held in Belfast since Bellator 173 in February 2017. Unlike that event, which featured no title bouts, the Bellator 302 card is topped by a pair of championship showdowns.

In the main event, Corey Anderson and Karl Moore will battle for the vacant light heavyweight championship. The belt became available after Vadim Nemkov chose to vacate the belt in a move up to heavyweight. Nemkov won the title in August 2020 and successfully defended it four times before officially making the jump to heavyweight at February’s PFL vs. Bellator event, where he defeated PFL’s Bruno Cappelozza.

Anderson is one of the men who failed to wrestle the title from the grasp of Nemkov. In the pair’s first meeting, Anderson was seemingly winning the fight when an accidental clash of heads in the third round opened a cut over Nemkov’s eye, ending the fight in a no contest five seconds before the end of the round. Had the fight ended after the completion of the third round, Anderson likely would have won a technical decision.

Anderson would get his rematch with Nemkov, but found little of the success he had the first time around, with Nemkov taking a clear unanimous decision.

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The fights with Nemkov are the only times Anderson has entered the Bellator cage and left without having his hand raised, compiling a 4-1 record with three stoppage victories. In his most recent outing, Anderson took a split decision win over Phil Davis.

Moore will have the home cage advantage as he competes in front of his hometown Belfast fans. Moore has fought four times in Bellator, winning all four fights, with three wins coming by decision.

Moore last fought at Bellator 297, earning a decision win over Alex Polizzi.

In the co-main event, the greatest fighter in Bellator history returns to the cage as Patricio Pitbull puts his featherweight championship on the line against Jeremy Kennedy.

Pitbull will be looking to pull out of a spiral that has seen him lose back-to-back fights for the first time in his accomplished professional career.

At Bellator 297, Pitbull, a former lightweight champion who is on his third stint as featherweight king, attempted to drop down to bantamweight to win a title in the third weight class of his career. Instead, Pitbull was outworked and dominated by Sergio Pettis, who took a lopsided decision.

This past July, Pitbull made the fateful decision to take a fight with Chihiro Suzuki on extremely short notice in Japan’s Rizin promotion. Pitbull lost the fight by first-round knockout.

Pitbull was set to return to action at PFL vs. Bellator only to see both scheduled opponents fall out of the event with injuries.

Kennedy has plenty of big-fight experience, with a 3-1 record in the UFC and a stint in PFL. Since joining Bellator, Kennedy has gone 4-1, with a loss to Adam Borics as the lone blemish on his Bellator record.

Since dropping a decision to Borics, Kennedy has won three consecutive fights, with wins over Emmanuel Sanchez, Aaron Pico and Pedro Carvalho setting up his shot at the title.

The rest of the undercard features more intriguing matchups with a European flair. Fabian Edwards, brother of UFC welterweight champion Leon Edwards, looks to take the next step toward gold when he takes on fast rising contender Aaron Jeffery at middleweight. Plus, Irish sensation James Gallagher is back in a featherweight bout against veteran Leandro Higo. And Lightweights open the main card when Tim Wilde takes on Manouel Sousa.

Bellator Belfast fight card, odds
Corey Anderson -500 vs. Karl Moore +360, vacant light heavyweight championship
Patricio Pitbull (c) -105 vs. Jeremy Kennedy -115, featherweight championship
Fabian Edwards -150 vs. Aaron Jeffery +125, middleweights
Leandro Higo -135 vs. James Gallagher +110, featherweights
Tim Wilde -135 vs. Manouel Sousa +110, lightweights
Viewing information
Date: March 22 | Location: SSE Arena — Belfast, Northern Ireland
Time: 4 p.m. ET (noon ET for prelims)
Channel: Max (subscription required)
Predictions
Corey Anderson vs. Karl Moore: When breaking down the level of competition, it’s easy to see that Anderson has faced tougher competition than Moore, and has responded to that tough competition with many stoppage victories. Moore will have a rabid local fanbase cheering him on, to be sure, but it shouldn’t be expected that the adrenaline bump will carry him to victory over a fighter who we have every reason to believe is simply better and more dangerous. Pick: Corey Anderson via TKO3

Patricio Pitbull vs. Jeremy Kennedy: Were this the Pitbull of just a few years back, one would have every reason to believe that he should retain his title and keep right on being the best fighter in Bellator history. But this is a Pitbull who has looked noticeably slower, a bit less capable of pulling the trigger when needed, coming off of two losses and who is coming off a cervical spine surgery that he said he will “never be the same” after. Kennedy doesn’t carry the traits of a “special fighter” but he is good enough to beat a diminished version of Pitbull. The champion retaining his title wouldn’t be a shock, but Kennedy likely has enough to take a hard-fought decision. Pick: Jeremy Kennedy via UD