Video shows Arman Tsarukyan drilling elbows that KO’d Mauricio Ruffy at UFC 331

Ryan Harkness breaks down daily mixed martial arts (MMA) news, providing unique context to stories that only 15 years of obsessing over the sport can provide, having worked for FOX Sports, Yahoo! Sports, UPROXX, MSN, Bleacher Report, HDNet and CagePotato, among others, before joining MMAmania.com in 2017.

Arman Tsarukyan’s amazing double-elbow knockout win over Mauricio Ruffy (watch it here) wasn’t just a fluke — footage from his training camp leading up to UFC 331’s co-main event shows “Batman” hard at work drilling the ultra-violent move.

Tsarukyan was a big betting favorite coming into his fight against Ruffy, but most expected the wrestling powerhouse to take down the flashy Brazilian striker to avoid ending up on the wrong end of a flashy knockout. Instead, it was Tsarukyan who landed a picture-perfect knockout, slinging an elbow that caught Ruffy flush to the face.

Ruffy was out after the first elbow, and then the second elbow came from the other side to finish things off.

And those specific elbows were clearly a big part of Tsarukyan’s preparation based on video that was shared following the win. In it, Tsarukyan can be seen firing that same style of sneaky strike repeatedly. He also threw the same elbow in another clinch just a dozen seconds before doing it again and scoring the knockout.

So, it looks like Tsarukyan was prepared for Ruffy to fight the takedown hard against the cage, and the elbow was a planned reaction to Mauricio fighting for the underhook to neutralize his grappling. Once that happened, Ruffy’s face was exposed to those quick elbows.

The win over Ruffy is Tsarukyan’s sixth consecutive Lightweight win and almost guarantees him a 155-pound title shot. The only question is whether he’ll have to sit on the sidelines (in UFC, at least) if division champion, Justin Gaethje, rematches Ilia Topuria first. Given how sharp Tsarukyan is looking, it would be a shame to make him sit and wait a half-year or more for those two to fight and for the winner to recover.