Why Eddie Alvarez is fighting out his contract
Eddie Alvarez: “There was no deal signed, but there’s a point in every fighter’s career where sometimes you roll the dice on yourself.”
The majority of contracts are for three fights, but can range up to eight. If the league wants a fighter to remain, they generally sign a new contract prior to the final fight on the old contract. A small number of fighters elect to take a chance and fight out their contract, if they don’t get the contract they want.
If they win that final fight, then they go into free agency, and will likely get a better contract than the one they would have signed. If they lose, not so much. UFC lightweight Eddie Alvarez appeared recently on Ariel Helwani’s The MMA Hour and explained his decision to fight out his contract, in a rematch vs. Dustin Poirier in the main event of UFC on FOX 30 on July 28, 2018 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Alvarez said negotiations with the UFC were positive and cordial, but were taking time, so he decided to take another fight.
I’m betting on myself, said Alvarez, as transcribed by Shaun Al-Shatti for MMA Fighting. I’m not this new guy coming in who signed this new, giant, great deal. That’s not what happened. I sat down with Dana and the UFC, and we’re still very cordial, we’re still talking. There was no deal signed, but there’s a point in every fighter’s career where sometimes you roll the dice on yourself. Sometimes you believe in yourself and you roll the dice.
I like to put myself in a very emotional state, and I think by rolling the dice on myself, putting my back against the wall — in the past I’ve done really well there, so I’m kinda putting my own back against the wall and I’m rolling the dice and I’m betting on me.
The first fight between the pair was wild, but unfortunately ended with a No Contest declared after Alvarez accidentally landed two knees.
When I fought Dustin, Dustin did well,” acknowledged Alvarez. “And a lot of guys do well against me. He pounds his chest and says he did well. A lot of guys do well. A lot of guys were winning against me. If I can count on my hands who was winning against me, there’s a lot of you guys out there. But you didn’t win. And then when I came back, I felt his spirit break. And this is an honest assessment. I’m not trying to be mean or start a fight or anything like that. This is how I felt inside the cage. And a part of me feels like he knows this, and that’s the only reason he’s begging for a rematch. Because when you feel like you beat someone, you don’t care to fight them again.
“Why would you care so much to fight a guy that you sincerely yelled to the whole masses, ‘I beat?’ It just didn’t make any sense to me. So I know what I know, I know what I felt, and it’s going to happen again. It’s sincerely going to happen again. And it has nothing to do with Dustin. It has more to do with my contract issue — that I’m rolling the dice on myself and I’m betting on myself, and it feels lovely.