Urijah Faber knows he'll be shorter, smaller and older than Arman Tsarukyan at RAF 8 — but so what?

When Urijah Faber first heard Real American Freestyle wanted to match him up with top UFC lightweight contender Arman Tsarukyan at Saturday’s RAF 8 event in Philadelphia, he had one quick question.

“I was like, ‘Are you guys sure you want me to wrestle him?’” Faber told Uncrowned this week. “I mean, he’s a lot bigger than I am.”

This is true. Tsarukyan competes at 155 pounds in the UFC, but typically walks around weighing somewhere in the 180-pound range. Faber competed primarily in the 145- and 135-pound divisions during his MMA career, which ended with a knockout loss to current UFC bantamweight champ Petr Yan in 2019.

Now he’s a 46-year-old dad and business owner. He stays in good shape and gets on the mats as much as he possibly can, but suddenly the RAF organizers want him to square off with a 29-year-old UFC contender who appears to be firing on all cylinders as he enters his athletic prime? It seemed like a lot to ask from this gentleman of a certain age.

“He’ll have a distinct size advantage over me,” Faber said. “And a youth advantage. And a couple other things. But wrestling is fun for me. It’s not some difficult task. It’s the type of sport that allows you to jump into a situation where the odds are stacked against you but it’s not a problem. I was kind of a late bloomer in wrestling anyway, and what I realized is that none of that matters. You just believe in yourself and your skill set and go out and have fun.”

This is partly how RAF has managed to keep grabbing the attention of not just freestyle wrestling purists, but also fight fans in general. Professional fist-fights are serious business. Your whole world — not to mention your face, teeth and other important physical features — can change in an instant.

But wrestling? To the guys who grew up doing it, this is just fun and games. So why not jump in there against a bigger, younger opponent and see how it goes? As long as you can handle the possibility of some morning-after soreness to go with a bruised ego, it’s not a bad way to make a buck and keep the competitive fire burning.

That’s what Faber told himself when he initially agreed to wrestle Cayden Henschel, a young wrestler much closer to his size. But when RAF wanted Henschel to switch to a match against former PFL champ Lance Palmer, that left Faber going up against Tsarukyan.

The difference in weight might have been his first concern, but soon after he was forced to ask himself if Tsarukyan’s penchant for brawling before and after competitions might be an issue.

This is, after all, the same guy who punched Georgio Poullas after time expired in their first match. He also head-butted Dan Hooker at a UFC weigh-in. One of the ways Tsarukyan has made himself such a must-see attraction of late is by making his volatility a sort of marketing asset. You have to watch him because you never know what he’ll do. None of that is lost on Faber.

Arman Tsarukyan (right) has proven to be a wildcard even on the RAF mats.

“I never got the warmest vibe from Arman, to be honest. He doesn’t seem like the nicest guy,” Faber said. “When I was out there last time, he kind of seemed to me like this rich, indifferent kid. I’m looking forward to maybe having some interactions with him at the press conference and in the build-up, but I’m not the kind of guy that’s going to let people punk me or push me around either. I think people pretty much know me, and know I’m a respectful guy, so I’m hoping there’s not an after-the-bell fight or anything. But I’ll probably bring my mouthpiece just in case.”

For Faber, the main appeal of these RAF events is the chance to keep testing himself even as his own athletic glory days grow smaller in the rearview mirror. He’ll be 47 next month, he said, and he always likes to get in some type of competition around his birthday, just to see what he’s still got left in the tank.

One of these days, Faber said, he knows he’ll have to stop doing stuff like this. Inevitably, you get too old to wrestle UFC fighters on live TV. It happens to everyone, and once that window closes it usually never opens again. So why not get what fun you can out of it before it’s too late?

“I’m right at the edge of being too old to do this,” Faber said. “But right now I’m still just barely young enough, and I love these challenges. I still believe in myself. My mind, my knowledge, it’s better than it’s ever been. But it’s like that old tale of a 90-year-old sensei who’s gained all this knowledge, and if only he could keep the body he had then he’d be the baddest dude on the planet.

"Arman better come prepared. I might have a dad bod — he called me a sack of potatoes. But the mind, you’ve got to watch out for the mind.”