"You go out there and be exciting like a Tony Ferguson, you get KO'd" - Eddie Alvarez defends Rose Namajunas and team for "boring" performance
Eddie Alvarez recently gave his take on Rose Namajuna's fight against Carla Esparza at UFC 274. 'The Underground King' is no stranger to title fights and was quick to weigh in on the women’s strawweight matchup discussing a fighters internal struggle to keep the crowd excited and ensuring his/her victory.
During his most recent appearance on BetParx, ‘The Underground King’ referred to his fight against Anthony Pettis at UFC Fight Night: Dillashaw vs. Cruz as an example of the struggle between wanting to give the fans what they want and winning the bout:
“When I fought Pettis it was a kind of boring. And I got s**t on this fight because I kept it boring. But in my eyes, I was just saying, 'Look, I had a fight to win'. That was my justification for how boring the fight was. Nobody liked it. And I put the crowd second, and you can do that, but you can’t do that often.”
The former UFC lightweight champion spoke on the women’s strawweight showdown, defending Namajunas for her performance. According to 'The Underground King', the team's strategy was to keep 'Thug' from being overactive or taking too many risks, which could lead to her being taken down,
To further establish his point, Eddie Alvarez discussed Tony Ferguson’s exciting and reckless style of fighting, which led to him being knocked out by Michael Chandler at the same event:
"You go out there and be exciting like Tony Ferguson, you get KO’d. Tony probably could have played outside. Jabbed and somehow squeaked out the win, and the whole crowd would have booed him… And also on top of that, lose half of you paycheck.”
Alvarez further elaborated on how the fighters' paychecks are divided into two payments: show money and win money. The first is given to the fighter after they step onto the scale, and the second is given to the winner of the bout. That’s how, according to 'The Underground King', the promotion motivates fighters to put on exciting fights.
However, this backfires at times as fighters tend to take a safer approach to winning the fight at all costs instead of securing a decisive victory.
Watch Eddie Alvarez discuss the Namjunas vs.Esparza bout below:
...What do you think? 🥊@Ealvarezfight breaks down the Catch-22 of playing defense during a fight vs. going for a knockout!
Some say @rosenamajunas lost to @CarlaEsparza1 at #UFC274 by doing just that 😯...What do you think? 🥊 https://t.co/mHgFTpIzkA
Eddie Alvarez's stint in ONE championship
The former Bellator lightweight titleholder made his way to the UFC, only to win the title and lose it to Conor McGregor at UFC 205. Alvarez then made the jump to ONE championship back in 2019. The American suffered a devastating knockout loss at the hands of Timofey Nastyukhin on his debut in the promotion.
However, Alvarez bounced back by making it to the lightweight Grand Prix semifinals by submitting Eduard Folayang, only to withdraw due to injury.
Eddie Alvarez's fight against Luri Lapicus was heavily promoted within ONE debut on the TNT network in America. However, he lost the bout due to illegal knee strikes. In his next outing, 'The Underground King' recorded a unanimous decision loss to Ok Rae Yoon at the fourth event broadcast by the American TV station.