“El Cucuy” is back on the mats.
Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) fan favorite and former interim Lightweight champion Tony Ferguson takes on Armenian hot-head Arman Tsarukyan in the co-main event of Real American Freestyle (RAF) 10 this weekend (Sat., June 13, 2026) inside Chaifetz Arena in St. Louis, Missouri.
For Ferguson, returning to wrestling is a full-circle moment. It was the combat sport he started in, the sport that gave him structure and, in his words, the sport that saved his life.
“I
was born in Oxnard, California, and when I was very little — my father wasn’t around, my stepdad stepped in the picture,” Ferguson said in RAF 10’s YouTube promo video. “He said, ‘You know what? I want you to have the experience of the woods, I want you to have the experience of hunting, I want you to have the experiences that I had growing up.’ We drove from California all the way to Michigan.”
“I wanted to be in boxing, and I wanted to do taekwondo,” Ferguson continued. “I wanted to do all the Chuck Norris and Bruce Lee stuff that everybody else was doing around that time, because that’s what all the movies were doing. I always grew up wanting to be special forces. … In Michigan, it was a little different. Little did I know that wrestling was just one of those sports that saved my life.”
Ferguson recalled the first time he walked into a wrestling room and got thrown around, saying that was the last time he ever allowed that to happen.
From there, he made wrestling part of his arsenal and learned that it was okay to be aggressive, compete hard and “fight for your food.”
While most fans know Ferguson for his wild striking, slicing elbows and relentless pressure inside the cage, he made it clear that people have not seen the full extent of his wrestling.
Ferguson said there is “zero film” of him wrestling and pointed to his freestyle state championships, a second-place finish at freestyle nationals in Syracuse and interest from schools such as Stanford and The Citadel as proof of his pedigree.
After a brief stop at Central Michigan University, Ferguson eventually found his way to Grand Valley State, where a call from teammate Dustin Dean led him back into the wrestling room. Ferguson said he showed up nervous, but quickly proved he belonged, jumping into live wrestling, sprints and drills before pushing himself to the point of vomiting.
That day helped create a bond with Grand Valley State coach Dave Mills, who later gave Ferguson a chance to continue school and wrestling through a promissory note. Ferguson said Mills believed in him when he was struggling to pay tuition, and that trust helped teach him what a coach and role model should be.
Ferguson went on to captain the team, work full-time, attend school full-time and win a national title at Grand Valley State. Years later, after his MMA career took off, Ferguson said he eventually paid the note back in full, writing the final check in 2015 or 2016 with a smiley face and a heartfelt message to his coach.
Now, Mills will be in his corner against Tsarukyan, who is undefeated in RAF and has dominated everyone he has faced so far.
Will “El Cucuy” be the one to hand Tsarukyan his first RAF loss?
He sure believes so.
“When it goes into my type of style, I’m a freestyler. It depends on what athlete I’m in front of,” Ferguson said. “And when I play the game like that, I’m better at chess than Bobby Fischer. You have no idea how fast I am, how strong I am. When I saw RAF, it lit up a new fire in me. I’m going to beat Arman by doing exactly what I do, because I’m that type of guy.”
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