Arman Tsarukyan brawl “not what wrestling’s about” per RAF champ: “That’s not who wrestlers are”

Arman Tsarukyan will have a sequel clash with Georgio Poullas under the RAF banner later this week, and the wrestler who went viral for beating Gable Steveson hopes the two keep it clean in the rematch after their initial brawl. The wrestler in question is Wyatt Hendrickson, who defends his RAF Unlimited Championship against long-time rival Trent Hillger on March 28th at RAF07.

The brawl at RAF 06 between Arman Tsarukyan and Georgio Poullas made headlines with illegal strikes being exchanged between the two during a wrestling contest that had a palpable, ever-growing tension to it before the fight broke out. In the context of wanting to pursue MMA someday, punching people is a fun time for Hendrickson. But relative to Tsarukyan’s brawl, Hendrickson thinks they should “absolutely” keep that sort of thing out of the wrestling space.

The headliner of this Real American Freestyle event will see Tsarukyan versus Poullas II, with the pair running it back here at RAF07. When offering up his thoughts on what happened in that first contest and then this looming rematch on Saturday, Hendrickson said [via Bowks Talking Bouts],

“What happened was really unique and you could tell that Arman’s not just a wrestler because that’s not wrestler behavior I would say. Like it’s really important to control your emotions. That’s why there’s penalty points for doing stuff like that. That was worse than a penalty point. But at the same time, the way Georgio kind of kept; he was kind of egging him on to do that.”

“So, part of me, I think it’s kind of cool for entertainment purposes, but one thing I thought of is if this is people’s first introduction to wrestling, it’s not accurate. Like, matches like that. Like, that’s not who wrestlers are. So, I’m just; obviously people that know me well know that that’s not what wrestling’s about.”

“But if they think of, oh, wrestling’s people that; they start hitting people and they lose their emotions. Of course that was kind of a different type of match like that we haven’t seen before because of everything that transpired. But I hope people didn’t see that and they assume that that’s what wrestling is.”

Arman Tsarukyan and Georgio Poullas should “just wrestle a fair wrestling match”, says Hendrickson

While feeling like Arman Tsarukyan’s previous RAF effort did not embody that quintessential wrestling decorum piece, looking at the other side of the coin on the Poullas brawl situation, Hendrickson continued [via Bowks Talking Bouts],

“But it’s a unique factor that they’re bringing in UFC, jiu-jitsu, influencers. It’s a whole awesome spectrum of competitors which is very unique. But with that, I think that’s really good because some of us wrestlers are so good, it’s almost not entertaining. Like we go out there and we just destroy a guy in 20 seconds and the match is over. We’ve seen that with Zahid Valencia, David Carr, and stuff like that.”

“But I think it’ll be a good rematch. I’d like to see those two just wrestle a fair wrestling match and not try to; I mean, if they want to go do MMA or grappling, I think yeah, absolutely. Just don’t do it at RAF. Go do your own thing. But I’d like to see a fair wrestled match with respect on both sides of wrestlers at RAFO7.”