The UFC still hasn’t officially announced the main or co-main event for UFC 331 on September 19th in Los Angeles, but reliable reports have Charles Oliveira vs. Arman Tsarukyan set to fight for the second time on the card.
Oliveira and Tsarukyan fought for the first time at UFC 300, which saw Tsarukyan take a razor-thin split decision win. There’s plenty of arguments amongst “Do Bronx” and “Akhalkalakets” fans as to who really deserved the judges’ nod. And then there’s Dustin Poirier, who believes a wardrobe malfunction cost Oliveira a first round submission win.
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“Listen, it was a close fight, but they had a malfunction with the clothing that saved Arman,” Poirier said on the Deep Waters podcast. “I don’t know how nobody else is talking about this. Coming from a guy who knows how to miss guillotines, he would have gotten that guillotine if those shorts wouldn’t have slipped off.”
Oliveira did indeed catch Tsarukyan in an extremely tight guillotine in the first round of their UFC 300 fight, only for Tsarukyan’s pants to slip off past his butt as the Georgian fighter escaped.
“The shorts slipped off and it allowed him to get out of Charles’ guard,” Poirier insisted. “Pull that up, HQ. He had full guard, locked in guillotine. Arman started to get his hips down, his shorts came down which allowed Charles’ guard to come off and saved Arman. It saved him.”
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“Cheeks clappin, or he would have been tappin'”
Oliveira will get a chance to prove to the world that he deserved to win that first fight if this rumored fight at UFC 331 comes together. “Do Bronx” has gone on to fight four more times since UFC 300 in April 2024, going 3-1. Tsarukyan has fought in the UFC once more, beating Dan Hooker in November 2025. But he’s kept a very busy grappling and wrestling schedule, going 10-1-1 in the past nine months.
