UFC lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez might be in the shadows of his UFC 205 opponent Conot McGregor right now, but he believes that will all change after November 12.
The two meet next weekend from Madison Square Garden in New York City, but they were on the phone lines together Thursday for a conference call.
While McGregor proclaimed to be preparing to retire Alvarez, the “Underground King” feels he is on a path to making the UFC great once more with a win.
“I will go down as the best lightweight in UFC history, that’s what I’ll go down as,” Alavrez said (thanks to MMAFighting for the quotes). “It’ll start with him (McGregor), but then, I will make UFC great again and I will continue to fight the number one guys who belong here. I sincerely felt I deserved a break. This (UFC 205) is my break, and then we’ll get back to some real sh*t and get back to fighting the real No. 1 contenders, who fight the best guys and earn their way to the title, not the guys who have a funny accent and sell tickets.
“I fought all over the world against the best guys in the world. Fighting personally I never saw it as a job, I saw it as an opportunity. I never really looked at it as if it was going to work out financially or maybe it wouldn’t. I was never sure, I just knew that I loved what I was doing. I made a lot of promises to a lot of people early in my career and just to be able to get the UFC title, get to the pay-per-view, get to the biggest event in MSG. Its’ a dream come true and the time is here. I’m excited about it, and I think I have the right guy in front of me to do some big things.”
Alvarez became the first fighter to win gold in both the UFC and Bellator when he finished Rafael dos Anjos earlier this year.