Is Eddie Alvarez Becoming A Dirty Fighter?
MMAFighting- Dustin Poirier doesn’t want to come right out and say he considers Eddie Alvarez a dirty competitor.
But after his experiences with Alvarez over the course of two fights with the former UFC and Bellator lightweight champion, well, Poirier went about as close as you can go without flat-out making the accusation.
”I don’t want to say somebody’s a dirty fighter,” Poirier said at the UFC on FOX 30 post-fight press conference. “But the first fight, you kneed me; the second fight, you tried to elbow me illegally and you gave me a wet willy. We’ve got to draw the line somewhere.”
Out of all of Conor McGregor’s opponents, Eddie Alvarez was the one I liked the most at the time of their fight. I’ve become bigger fans of fighters like Max Holloway, or Dustin Poirier, years after their bouts with the Notorious One, but Eddie was the one who “hurt” the most to see get brutalized by McGregor at every turn. This was because “The Underground King” had just realized his dream of becoming a UFC Champion after fifteen years and thirty-two fights as a professional mixed martial artist, and more importantly, as a truly scrappy underdog. Sometime after that fight, however, things seemed to change for Alvarez. He got a taste of the limelight, lost on the grandest stage possible, and began pushing himself as the “most violent” fighter on the UFC more than ever before.
Alvarez has always been a mauler obviously, but primarily, he’s a wrestler. Always has been. It’s the main discipline he’s skilled in, and his only chance to defeat some of the lightweights in his division (Conor). After that UFC Lightweight Championship bout at UFC 205, Eddie said that not wrestling was a massive mistake, and cost him everything just because he let his emotions get the best of him. Well, since that fight, we haven’t seen much wrestling from Alvarez. Before it, really, because there wasn’t a ton of it in the Rafael dos Anjos title fight either.
But next, he had the first Dustin Poirier fight, which saw him get rocked badly in the first, begin to capitalize on a few shots in the second and made a comeback, and then throw a brutal and blatantly illegal knee to a grounded Poirier, knocking him out and giving him what he describes as the “worst concussion he has ever described”. After that, Alvarez won an all-out war with Justin Gaethje, and then of course, the Poirier rematch was booked. In the build to it, Alvarez claimed Poirier “gave up” in the first fight and that he would’ve won illegal knee or not (which was a weird approach and stance to take as a once scrappy underdog), and then in the rematch this Saturday, grabbed the cage multiple times, landed an illegal 12-6 elbow, and tried to fishhook Poirier’s…ears? Watch the clip and see for yourself, it’s pretty wild (and BLATANTLY against the rules).
When things start adding up like they are, you have to start questioning whether or not Eddie Alvarez is becoming a dirty fighter. You can argue that the 12-6 elbow rule is dumb, and I agree with that argument, but it doesn’t necessarily hold up in court because it’s been the rule for 18 years. Alvarez has been fighting professionally for fifteen. Just read a rulebook, bro. It ain’t hard to do, and I can tell you that from first hand experience. I’ve never been in a fight in my life and I know the rules of your job apparently better than you do!
I don’t want to come right out and say I’ve fully flipped on Eddie, and would flat out say that, “YES! Eddie Alvarez is officially a piece of shit in the cage.”, but like I said, it’s time the questioning and evaluating begins. Luckily this time around, the illegal strike thrown cost him the fight. Pretty poetic if you ask me.