Eddie Alvarez back flip
One of the best lightweight fighters not signed to the Ultimate Fighting Championship became a free-agent following last Friday nights Bellator 76 event.
Former Bellator champ Eddie ‘The Silent Assassin’ Alvarez (24-3) completed the last fight of his current contract by knocking high profile fighter Patricky ‘Pitbull’ Freire with a head kick in the main event of the Windsor, Ontario show.
The Philadelphia based fighter isn’t sure where he’ll end up next, but he wants to take his time when it comes to signing his next contract whether or not that is with Viacom, the parent company of MTV2 and Spike, or the UFC, or another promotion.
Alvarez was a guest on The MMA Hour over at MMAFighting.com on Wednesday, where he spoke about his options as a free-agent as well as his recent victory over ‘Pitbull’ Freire.
“I want to sit down with the people of Viacom,” Alvarez said. “I’m interested in what’s going on with the Spike deal next year. Of course Bellator has a ton of huge things going on, and I’m interested in what them guys have to say. From there, we’ll field offers from everyone else, the UFC and everyone else, whoever’s out there, I don’t know who’s out there. I didn’t know Bellator existed, they just started when I was done with my Dream contract, they just popped up out of nowhere.”
The win was the second in a row for ‘The Silent Assassin’ since losing the Bellator title last year to Michael Chandler at Bellator 58. Alvarez avenged a previous loss to Shinya Aoki this past April by finishing the submission specialist via first round TKO at Bellator 66.
When asked about interest from the UFC, in particular from promotion president Dana White who sent him a Twitter message saying “let’s talk” following last Friday’s victory, Alvarez attributed it to White playing games.
“Dana’s a character, man, he likes to play games. I know what he’s doing, I know what he’s up to, hat’s off to him and I’ll see what happens.”
“There’s very few times in your career when you become a free agent after winning. That’s the biggest key.”
With Bellator moving to Spike in the New Year, the coffers may be a little deeper in order to keep a fighter like Alvarez around. The issue being whether or not you put him into the next tournament, which I don’t think Alvarez wants, or you keep him around to headline events for “one-off” fights.
If a world title is truly what Alvarez is after, then I can’t imagine he’ll stick with Bellator as he’s unlikely to have to run the gambit of fights to get to a UFC title that he would in a Bellator tournament. Of course this is all provided that he continues to win.
We shall see.