It took approximately 10 seconds for the doubts to start creeping in.
As soon as referee John McCarthy said the words and Eddie Alvarez bounded out to the center of the cage to meet Donald Cerrone in the co-main event of Saturday’s UFC 178, the differences were startling.
Wow, we all thought, Alvarez sure looked small.
Cerrone’s size advantage didn’t exactly come as a surprise given he’s listed at 6’1” to Alvarez’s 5’9”. The sheer physical disparity was noticeable during the pre-fight staredown, but it wasn’t until Alvarez ducked low to throw his first UFC jab and Cerrone just missed his face with a counter knee that the ramifications began to become clear.
Cerrone’s length and more diverse striking attack eventually told the tale of Alvarez’s disappointing UFC debut. The Octagon’s most active fighter wore the former Bellator champ to the nub during their 15 minutes together, scoring a unanimous-decision win (29-28 x 3).
In the end, it wasn’t just that Alvarez looked small by comparison, he looked fairly one-dimensional too.
Cerrone blasted those counter knees to his midsection all fight long and lashed his legs with low kicks until he literally couldn’t stand any more. When it was over, Cerrone had landed 40 more significant strikes than Alvarez, according to the official Fightmetric statistics. He’d outpaced him 26-2 in leg strikes and stuffed all five of Alvarez’s takedown attempts.
The Philadelphia native had waited so long and fought so hard just to make it to the Octagon, it was kind of sad to watch his first bout there spoiled in such thorough fashion. While Cerrone continued his surprising rise, any notion of Alvarez as one of the top three or four lightweights in the world must be tossed on the scrap heap, at least for now.
All told, we were left wondering if his near 11-year trek through a series of smaller organizations had obscured some pretty big holes in his game.
Holes that Cerrone was able to bust wide open on day one in the UFC.
Make no mistake, Alvarez had his moments. His best exchange occurred with two minutes gone in the first round, when Cerrone tried to clinch with him and Alvarez made him pay with a series of right hands. Thirty seconds later, he rocked Cerrone with a winging combination, and the altercation likely won him the round.
But Cerrone weathered the storm, stuffing a pair of takedown attempts, and managed to regroup between rounds.
The size difference made it imperative that Alvarez control the distance using his footwork and speed, but during the final 10 minutes, Cerrone’s knees lanced him in the gut each time he tried to punch his way in. When he stood at distance, Cerrone punished him with kicks and cracked him with longer, straighter punches.
Cerrone’s assault on Alvarez’s core was so effective that by the time Alvarez crumpled under the strain of a badly bruised left leg down the stretch in the final round, it merely put an exclamation point on the end of the Cowboy’s statement win.
If this victory earned Cerrone the right to take on the winner of Anthony Pettis’ December title defense against Gilbert Melendez, no one would complain. But Cerrone will likely insist on fighting one or two more times before the end of the year, so there’s no telling where he’ll end up by the time the championship carousel has a seat for him.
At 30 years old, Alvarez likely has a lengthy journey ahead of him in the UFC. I suspect if he soldiers on he’ll eventually wind up being considered a top-10 guy in the company’s most competitive weight class. Maybe higher, if he eventually follows his friend Frankie Edgar down to featherweight.
But what we saw from Alvarez against Cerrone won’t cut it in a division where every single one of your opponents is going to be an all-around killer.
Especially if you’re usually going to be the smaller dog in the fight.
Alvarez is good enough that he will find his legs in this division. But if he means to compete for the UFC 155-pound title, he may have to add a few more tools to his toolbox.
If anything, his first trip to the Octagon reminded us of a simple fact: UFC debuts are hard. This we already knew, but a sport as unforgiving as MMA must continually serve up these painful reminders, lest we forget what we’re dealing with here.
For Alvarez to come in and face a fighter as hot and active as Cerrone in his first Octagon bout?
Maybe that was a tall order all along.
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