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Eddie Alvarez: My Philly street fights puts Kimbo’s backyard brawls to shame
By Zach Arnold | May 5, 2010
On Eddie Alvarez’s Wikipedia page, someone listed the following under Fight History:
“Extensive street fighting background. Claims to be undefeated in unsanctioned fights.” [5]
The number [5] takes you to Alvarez’s Bellator web site profile which says the following:
Alvarez was born and raised in Kensington, a Philadelphia neighborhood notorious for being overrun with drugs, gangs and violence. To ensure his son’s safety, his father made sure he knew how to fight; he spent hours guiding his hands and hips to show him how to deliver the most power into a punch. At a young age, Alvarez took those lessons to the streets where he toted around two pairs of boxing gloves and challenged older children to fight. These battles took place in crowded city streets where the only breaks in action came when a car drove by or someone got knocked out. Like Rocky Balboa, another Philadelphia native, Alvarez gained respect by beating much larger opponents.
Alvarez made sure to point out during an interview with Sherdog on Monday that he, in fact, does not edit his Wikipedia page and had no idea where that claim came from. However, it’s not an assertion that he’s afraid to run away from.
“I have a lot more street fights than I did MMA fights, way way way more. Yeah, I mean, where I grew up my neighborhood was bad but I didn’t get fights in my neighborhood. I didn’t starting even getting into fights until like High School, maybe a little bit after High School but in my neighborhood there’s never fights, you got to fight and you’ll probably end up shot or dead after the fight so that wasn’t smart to fight in the neighborhood I grew up in but when I got out of High School I started hanging out, a lot of my friends today they still do the same thing I was doing when I was 18, 19, still getting into fights and things like that but it’s passed me, I did a real good job when I was street fighting and Kimbo wouldn’t have had shit on some of the tapes that I could have made when I was getting in trouble when I was younger.”
Alvarez knows a thing or two about bullies, having appeared on Mayhem Miller’s entertaining Bully Beatdown show on MTV. The Bellator Lightweight champion explained what parts of the show are scripted and what parts are real.
“The producers say to you and they say, you can beat him up, go beat him up, they tell me don’t slam too hard, not too hard, you can still slam but don’t because one of the guys got their ribs broke, I think Wilson Reis’ broke one of the guys’ ribs slamming him during the first season and no head kicks. Other than that, you know, show these dudes because the dudes, the guys who go on the show, I mean they’re not kidding, they honestly think they can do well against professional fighters, they do and I’m baffled and I think it should be legal to do what they do on Beatdown because most commissions won’t even let me fight a guy who you know even had a couple of professional fights, you know, the commission wouldn’t let that go, but yet I can fight a bully?”
Most of the time on Bully Beatdown, the “bully” ends up getting his ass kicked. Occasionally, you will see a fighter Thomas “Wildman” Denny (remember him from his fight against Nick Diaz?) who struggles against a scrub. Suffice to say, Eddie Alvarez didn’t want that happening to him on the show.
“I’m more nervous about fighting a bully than I am you know someone like Josh Neer, at least if Josh Neer beats me you know he’s a reputable guy and I could say, you know, oh he’s been in the game and you know this and that, but if this bully catches me I might as well hang it up, so there is… and the fighters would be lying if they say we weren’t a little bit nervous. I’m like shit, I’m going to go in there and handle this guy because if he can put up even a tenth of the fight, this is a lose-lose situation for me.”
Speaking of Josh Neer, the former UFC Lightweight fighter will be fighting Bellator’s Lightweight champion this Thursday in Boston. (TV: Fox Sports Net/Comcast Sportsnet). As Bjorn Rebney recently noted in an interview with The Fight Nerd, booking season one Bellator FC champions in super fights while season two tournaments are taking place is a risky deal. If one of the season one champions lose, it makes future booking that much harder.
“Absolutely and that is more of I’ve said many times part of the time I wear the promoter’s hat and part of the time I wear the fan’s hat and the safe road to pursue would be the road that would Eddie Alvarez sitting back and basically fighting conceivably fighting nobody or sitting back and waiting for the tournament to play itself out… but the fan in me would like to see the Josh Neer/Eddie Alvarez and I don’t think that it’s fair to an Eddie Alvarez or a Hector Lombard or Joe Soto to put them on the fence for five-six months and have them just sit. The life expectancy of these guys in this game is relatively short. You’re talking about a few years in some instances. I mean some guys are freaks like Randy Couture who are able to fight on and on in an never-ending fashion, but for most guys it’s a pretty short life expectancy. So, to fight a guy twice a year based on that to me is not fair and as a fan I want to see Eddie Alvarez, I want to see him challenged…”
Alvarez is perfectly happy with taking fight bookings rather than sitting back and waiting for season two’s tournament to play out — no matter how dangerous the fight is.
“Anybody who’s a veteran like Josh who’s been around a while always a risky fight but you know I’m not fighting because I want to fight shitty… I want to fight guys who want to challenge me and make me put on the best performance that I put on or it’s not even worth tuning in.
“I need to get a fight before the winner of the tournament, I mean that would have left me waiting around for a full year or something waiting for the winner of the tournament and I actually would have liked to fight before this but unfortunately I had to undergo surgery on my meniscus to get that all straightened out before I was able to get back in there. I don’t want to come back injured, you know, and put on a shitty show so I’m 100% now and I think Josh, regardless of who fights, puts on good fights. I’ve seen a lot of his past fights against you know good opponents and he’s a game dude, he sticks around and he throws a lot of stuff so I think it makes for a great fight.”
Alvarez is fighting Neer while coming off of knee surgery to repair meniscus damage, damage that he believes he suffered while fighting extensively last year in the DREAM ring in Japan.
“I fought in the DREAM tournament and I kind of tweaked it there, I just kept… I knew I had to get through the tournament with it so I just kept fighting through it and fighting through it and I just kind of procrastinated with the doctor and then I fought in the Bellator tournament and fought through the injury there as well, I think it was just the wear and tear. I think I just tore it a little bit and I should ahve got a fix when I tore it a little bit. Instead I just kept fighting and fighting and fighting trying to stack up some money, trying to beat some good guys and I got an injury. No biggie, I mean it was a minor, minor setback in what I was trying to do here.”
With the Alvarez family growing, he needs to keep making some money.
“You keep making babies, you got to keep making money.”
Part of making money is winning fights and maintaining a high perception in the minds of promoters and agents. Hey, I could insert a cheap plug in here for the Independent World MMA rankings, but that would be horrible of me to do. Except, of course, if you’re an agent and you represent someone like Eddie Alvarez, who is one of the 5 best Lightweights in the entire planet. Some fighters are complete marks for rankings and other fighters don’t care about them. Alvarez falls in the latter category, except of course when the rankings come into play when it comes to the size of his paycheck.
“I think rankings are no more than a way to negotiate your pay to a promotion when you become a free agent. Other than that, the rankings mean nothing. It doesn’t mean that the #5 guy can beat the #6 guy or the #6 guy can beat the 1st guy, I mean that’s just a way for my manager to say to a promoter, “Hey look my guy’s you know, he’s a high-ranked guy, so this is what he’s worth.” Other than that, they mean nothing, that doesn’t mean I can’t beat BJ, that don’t mean Frankie can’t beat BJ, you know you’ve seen it happen. In the last two weeks, the 1st and 2nd ranked guys got beat by what, the 7th and 10th ranked guys, something like that? It means nothing.”
Where Alvarez ranks amongst the world’s best Lightweights is up for dispute, but Bellator FC boss Bjorn Rebney raised eyebrows when he said that Eddie was in position to be the #1 Lightweight in the world should he beat Josh Neer on Thursday.
“I think it can because you know we’ve got, and again this is my opinion and it’s subjective, BJ (Penn) was #1 in the world and (Shinya) Aoki was #2 and there’s a good argument that Eddie was typically #3 in that line on most people’s rankings so BJ loses a fight and Aoki loses a fight pretty handily and Eddie is sitting in a position now where he can fight Josh Neer and ultimately establish himself as #1.”
I tend to think that 99 out of 100 MMA fans would say that whoever is the UFC Lightweight champion is the best Lightweight in the world, which means Frankie Edgar is #1. BJ Penn, who will re-match with Edgar in Boston, is #2. After that, you can certainly make a case that Alvarez is somewhere in the #3-#5 range, which is pretty great for a fighter outside of the UFC. Plus, it doesn’t help matters that Alvarez lost to Shin’ya Aoki, who got tooled by Gilbert Melendez last month. However, that’s MMAth.
With the fight on Thursday against Josh Neer, Eddie Alvarez is happy to make himself one of the major players in Bellator. Although his options of fighting in Japan for DREAM are still open, Eddie is primarily focused on becoming Bellator’s main ace and building up a promotion in America.
“I actually finished up all my obligations to DREAM with the Kikuno fight, that was my last fight on my contract but I’m still in great relations with Japan, they’re always asking me to come back and they’re willing to take me back whenever that is and I love it there, I love fighting there, but I truly want to build a top organization here in America, I want to help build Bellator. There’s UFC, there’s Strikeforce, and I think there’s room to have 3 or 4 top promotions here in America so I want to help build one of the top promotions and I want to help build it, they’re my main obligation right now so I’m signed with them and I’ll be fighting for them for as much in whoever they want me to fight and until you know they don’t have any fights for me or something like that if they’re going to take a break and I want to keep going then I’m sure Bjorn Rebney, he’s a really cool guy, he’s willing to lend me out here to try to get one of the other big names.”
Whether Alvarez wins or loses against Neer, he will end up facing the winner of season two’s tournament that includes the likes of Roger Huerta. Admittedly, Alvarez hasn’t watched much of the tournament so far.
“If I have a little bit down time I definitely record them and I’m going to get around to watching them. I did see one of the Bellator cards so far, I mean it was a really good card, but to be honest with you, my main focus is Josh Neer, I’m not looking past anyone. i want to beat him, I want to dominate him, and I want to beat him in a dominating fashion and then move on and prove why I’m the top ranked Lightweight in the world and prove why I’m the Bellator champion.”
Alvarez, like many MMA champions, is expected to not only win in strong fashion in each of his fights but also finish off opponents and avoid having fights go the score cards. We know about a lot of the awful MMA judging that currently exists in the business, but the main reason fans and promoters want to see fighters win and win decisively is because it’s more exciting and it leads to bigger paydays. Alvarez has an interesting take on what average MMA fans want to see when they go to a show and what their expectations are from fighters.
“I go back and forth with this as a fighter to be honest with you because I really like watching guys who are exciting, who throw caution to the wind, who look like they’re out and not caring, they’re the guys that I like to watch and they’re the guys I actually watch the sport for. To be honest with you, I don’t think anyone gives a shit if I win or I lose except for me and maybe my family and a couple of my close relatives. So the majority of the people who tune in to watch me are to watch me do something crazy, do something exciting, do something to take risks and make a fight and it’s only a real small, small percentage like maybe 1, 2% of the people watching really care if I win or not and I think the promoter’s feel the same way, the people, the money behind it feel the same way that the win’s not important as putting on a ridiculous fight or a ridiculous show so I think, I don’t know I go back and forth on it. I think you should win and should be able to do it in an exciting, devastating, high-pace, violent fashion. I think that’s the key to being entertaining and being a good fighter is to win and be entertaining, not just to do one or the other and it’s a hard task to do but that’s what we’re paid for, I mean that’s what you go to do.”
Hey, we care, but we also fall into the 1-2% that Eddie is referring to. Now, when we talk about fighters and their ability to finish fights, there are certain fighters who fall into a category of fighting exciting fights for the sake of it (Clay Guida, Jorge Gurgel, Marcus Davis) and then there are fighters who stick to a meticulous game plan and exciting or boring, they are more or less interested in winning at the end of the day (Greg Jackson’s guys). While the bonus system used by promotions such as UFC and Strikeforce can produce “sloppy C-level kickboxing” fights that the fans cheer for, Alvarez thinks that the bonus system is a big reason why you get such inconsistency in the sport in terms of fighter performances.
“Here’s the deal. This is how I feel about the whole thing. If the promoters are going to mad at the fighters about not putting on exciting fights and only worrying about the win and they’re going to get in their face and get mad at a fighter, take away the win bonus. Pay the guy a flat rate, pay him like an athlete, pay him like the rest of these guys. Don’t tell him he’s got to get $500,000 to show up and then whether he wins or not is the case of $1,000,000, you know how shaky, how nervous I’m going to be if the difference between me winning or losing is a million dollars? That’s crazy. I’m going to second-guess myself and maybe not do things that I’d normally do, so pay the man a flat rate, what you feel he’s worth, and then it will take all the pressure off of him and he can go out there and kick some ass.
“I never went into a training camp saying, ‘Oh, I’m only going $30,000 for this one so I’m not going into tonight, I’m not going to work out tonight because I’m only getting $30,000 for this fight.’ A real fighter is going to train to win regardless, it doesn’t matter what he’s getting paid, $1,000 or $100,000, so just pay him for you think he’s worth, don’t tell him he’s worth any less or he’s getting paid less because he lost a fight, that doesn’t mean he trains any less for that fight than the other ones he won.”
With a 19-2 record, Alvarez has won 17 of his fights by submission or KO/TKO. His track record as a fighter is one of a fighter that puts it all on the line and is rarely boring.
“You’ve seen my fights, I’m not a safe playing type of dude. I kind of you know ready, aim, fire type of person. I get in there and start mixing it up and don’t worry about it when I’m in the middle of it.”
With a win on Thursday night, Alvarez will continue to cement his position in Bellator as one of the promotion’s top aces and the face of the #3 company in the North American MMA scene.
Topics: Bellator, Media, MMA, Zach Arnold | 3 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Would those be the street fights in between the times when he’s waxing his eyebrows?
Just to give some color around Alvarez’ background. He grew up in the Kensington section of Philly, which is rough. Really rough. One of the worst sections of Philadelphia.
[…] is a big night for Bellator FC, as they have a show in Boston at the Wang Theatre with Eddie Alvarez fighting Josh Neer in a super fight along with Cole Konrad (training with Brock Lesnar) on the card. Check out this […]