Phil and David break down everything you need to know about one of the most exciting matchups at Lightweight for UFC Fight Night in Boston, and everything you don’t about how spectacular this fight is.
Lightweight Anthony Pettis vs. Eddie Alvarez
Former WEC Lightweight champion faces off against former Bellator Lightweight Champion in a bout that was just as good back then in fight fans’ fantasy pool as it is now this January 17, 2016 at the TD Garden in Boston, Massachusetts.
History / Introduction to Both Fighters
David: Anthony Pettis has taken a very broken road to the UFC title. It took the WEC merging with the UFC to do it, and perhaps a little luck inside the cage (I’ll explain later). Whatever the case, he’s the flashiest fighter without a title in the UFC. He’s MMA’s Alex Ovechkin (I can’t root for the Capitals being a Dallas fan, but if Dallas is out, Washington all the way baby!). This is crackerjack matchmaking and could easily be its own main event.
Phil: 2015 was a charnel house for UFC champions, and the first victim was Pettis. His dethroning wasn’t as one-sided as Rousey’s or as quick as Aldo’s, but it was brutal and protracted, a five round demolition at the hands of a relatively unheralded challenger. Even before this, he wasn’t as popular as the UFC would have liked him to be. Alongside Weidman and Velasquez, he represented a “new generation of stars” who didn’t catch on as fast as strongly as hoped. A big part of this is simply that none of them have fought very often. “Volume” and “pace” are bigger and bigger parts of the fighting aspect of MMA- it’s increasingly sub-optimal to pot-shot, and I think that’s true at the career level as well. You need to fight pretty often to gain serious relevance.
David: Eddie, like Anthony, carved most of his pugilism success outside of the UFC. He came out of nowhere to become a top 10 fighter in Dream’s stable, scoring massive wins over Hellboy and Kawajiri. And then he became the only reason to watch Bellator. Thankfully, Bellator give MMA fans a few more reasons by giving him quality opponents. His UFC run has felt stunted; the win over Gilbert Melendez wasn’t exactly dominant ,and Cerrone absolutely dominated him. However, take away the questions surrounding his UFC future, with may fall short of his cardinal hype, and you’re left with a fantastic action fighter who threatens with power as much as he threatens with technique.
Phil: Alvarez is one of the last world warriors to make it to the UFC, having fought in DREAM, Bodog, and on his last and longest stop, Bellator. The long and rancorous contract dispute with Bjorn Rebney’s crew had the same effect as Pettis’ injuries- it took a significant chunk of prime career away from a crowd-pleasing fan favourite, and pushed him to the sidelines.
What are the Stakes?
David: A title shot. The UFC wouldn’t mind a rematch between Rafael Dos Anjos and Pettis. It was a really good fight, all things considered (and by that I mean ‘vulgar display of power’ aside). And if Conor McGregor takes the crown then Pettis is even more attractive to the UFC. But chances are, Nate Diaz faces the winner of this bout, who then takes on the throne. Injuries always redirect the course of matchmaking, which is why any one of these men on tap makes for an intriguing scenario. Alvarez less so because Cerrone just got blasted by RDA, so the MMAth affects his marketing.
Phil: These guys are still well-known by the standards of the overcrowded lightweight division, and they represent investments from Zuffa. The “Welcome to the Show” campaign which kicked off 2015 was focused on Pettis, and taking Alvarez from Bellator necessitated giving him a plum contract. So, the winner is going to good places after this, probably to a #1 contender’s fight, with a Nurmagomedov or a Ferguson. The exact goings-on at the top of lightweight all remain under a long Irish shadow, however.
Where do they want it?
David: Pettis is all about operating in his pugilism bubble. The prettier he looks, the more effective he is. He’s all about territory. When you really study his game, his game isn’t about being dynamic. While the word ‘dynamic’ used to be meaningful, as every single fighter has eaten their well rounded spinach, it’s no longer descriptive of anything. It’s like the word “interesting”.
So Pettis’ isn’t dynamic in the traditional sense. He’s not an effective combination puncher (like Condit), and he doesn’t threaten with a general philosophy (like Lawler’s ‘stalk and wing’). I’ve said it before, but Pettis is all about percussion over pattern.
His singular strikes serve to drum the opponent in unorthodox and orthodox ways until the finish arrives, or is no longer necessary. As a whole, his striking doesn’t stack up to the elite, but he’s the rare fighter who doesn’t need the sum, just the parts. His right hand is fairly vicious, and his right kick to the body may be the best strike in his arsenal, but it’s all about opening of opportunities for pugilist percussion in different ways. He’s notorious for switching stances, or going ‘open’. On a long enough time line, he’ll threaten you with A-to-Z offense.
Phil: Showtime wants distance. It’s not rocket science to say that he’s a better kicker than he is a puncher, but his hands are crisp and accurate. It’s just that his efficacy drops when he’s not at the tip of his range. Closer in, he has a tendency to flurry to force his opponents back.
Stance-wise, he represents the difference between a switch-hitter and (urgh) “neo-footwork”. Rather than using the step of a strike to move into another stance, he largely stays in either orthodox or southpaw. What dictates this is traditionally his opponent- Pettis likes to be in open stance (orthodox against southpaw and vice versa) so that the range is maximized and he can smash the round kick to the body, which is still his most reliable strike. Unlike many switch hitters such as Cub Swanson, Pettis appears equally comfortable in either stance, but against Dos Anjos this left him trading body kicks with his liver exposed.
Pettis is a good wrestler and an excellent submission grappler, but his grappling is not integrated with his striking very well, moving between either a “wrestling mode” and a “striking mode”- again, Dos Anjos capitalized on this with hand-fighting and parries, and eventually takedowns.
However, given space to work Pettis is still perhaps the best sniper in MMA. His head kick and body kick are hidden behind feints and his right hand, and very difficult to effectively differentiate, and both represent potential one-shot knockouts. Melendez and Henderson haven’t been tapped before or since his fights with them (in MMA, anyway), cementing Pettis’ reputation as one of the most dangerous opportunists around.
David: Alvarez is strong and powerful on the feet. But he’s much more poetic and fluid than he’s given credit for. With a nice little delayed fuse on that step-in straight right, and strong footwork, he’s hard to defend on the feet despite being such a thudding, sometimes plodding puncher. He’s fast, but not blindingly so, and powerful, but not face meltingly so. The accumulation of strikes is where his finishing talent comes from.
He was also way ahead of the game in the grappling department. At a time when wrestlers were either using their acumen to neutralize, set up offense, or defend, Alavarez was using his wrestling as actual offense. One of my favorite fights of his against Andre Dida. First off, just watch it. It’s well worth your time.
Second, watch the way he uses his wrestling/grappling to position himself for better impact with his strikes. So few wrestlers back then were black hat, white hat thinkers; too conservative to give up their position, or too liberal in sacrificing position for submission. Alvarez used his knowledge of the game to mesh the two into a fantastic meld of transitory violence. He’s always been a legitimate talent in so many ways.
Phil: Eddie Alvarez reminds me of Robbie Lawler in that he doggedly stuck with a technical boxing game over a long career. Like Lawler, it’s sometimes led to an unfair perception as a brawler, but it’s more an artefact of consistently fighting at a distance where getting hit is an inevitability, and simply because high volume technical stand-up is very difficult to pull off in a sport with ten thousand things which can go wrong. He has a few other disadvantages that Lawler didn’t have- he’s not quite as good an athlete, and he’s a bit small for his weight class. He’s a more willing offensive grappler, however.
Alvarez is primarily a mid-range fighter, effectively darting in, using short but varied combinations, going body-head, and then moving out to the outside again. While he can potentially exploit Pettis’s problems with close range, his reliance on lateral movement and his shorter reach means that he’s going to have a tough time contesting kicking distance. He can kick himself, he just doesn’t do it all that much.
Insight from Past Fights
Phil: Unfortunately for Alvarez, while he soaks up damage against almost everyone he fights, he’s had very specific problems with kickers. Donald Cerrone and Kikuno both hurt him, and it doesn’t seem like a good sign against a kicker as purely dynamic as Pettis. Conversely, though, Alvarez isn’t scared to go to his solid wrestling game when he thinks it’s a good idea- his win over Melendez or his domination of the perennially-underrated Josh Neer.
David: It’s true that Alvarez is subject to brutal violence from the feet, but the RDA, and even the Melendez bouts (hell even the Jeremy Stephens bout) were blueprints for what Eddie can do. Which is close the distance, pop Pettis’ territorial bubble, and mix transition fighting with raw aggression.
X-Factors?
David: Not a whole lot. Anthony Pettis vs. Eddie Alvarez should be free of any philosophical shenanigans the fight gods typically mock us with.
Phil: Normally I’d say layoff, but Pettis has had multiple layoffs in his career, and looked great after pretty much all of them. I’ll say Alvarez durability. He’s been dropped so many times in his career, but no-one has ever stopped him with strikes apart from the Goat. No, not GSP or Jones. The other one. No, the other one.
Prognostication?
David: Gotta disagree with this one. Eddie has had trouble with plenty of fighters, but he’s rarely drowned by said trouble. If anything, he snaps his fight radar on. Against Pettis, I’m not arguing that this is some kind of advantage; just that a pattern doesn’t entail probability. I think it’s far more probable that Eddie pressures him, and wins through attrition. My only issue here is that Pettis, like Brian Ortega, is insanely gifted at getting his hips and legs off the ground, and remaining a constant threat from his back. Eddie should be prepared for this IMO. Eddie Alvarez by Split Decision.
Phil: Alvarez has had real problems staying on people without getting hurt, and in fact just tends to get hurt in almost every fight he’s in. There are pieces of his game which I can see working (the wrestling and his body shots in particular), but he’s not the dynamite power striker or the consistent pressure fighter which I think he really needs to be to back up those pieces of his apprach. Anthony Pettis by TKO, round 2.