Opinion: Eddie Alvarez’s Latest Business Plan

Editor’s note: The views and opinions expressed below are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sherdog.com, its affiliates and sponsors or its parent company, Evolve Media.*** If you read this column on a week-to-week basis, you’re hip to the fact that I consider mixed martial arts, charmingly so, freakish and strange. Many of this sport’s biggest names and drawing cards, the Conor McGregor and even a retired Chael Sonnen for instance, have embraced this concept and promoted themselves in such sensationalist ways. On the other hand, they keep up kayfabe and never truly, fully explicate that MMA on the greatest level is really just bread and circuses. Imagine my thrill this week, when UFC lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez called a spade a spade. This week in an interview with ESPN.com’s Brett Okamoto, the newly-minted 155-pound king was adamant that he didn’t so much care who the UFC considered his potential first challenger, so much as he was interested in the Aug. 20 outcome of the Nate Diaz-Conor McGregor rematch at UFC 202. “It’s a wait-and-see type thing right now,” Alvarez told Okamoto. “Let’s wait and see what Aug. 20 brings and then let’s make a big fight after that.” And then, Alvarez — a nearly 13-year MMA veteran and a co-author of some of the best fights in this sport’s history, a truly historic action fighter — found a way to win my heart even more profoundly. “Those are the guys I want to get my hands on,” Alvarez continued. “I’ve said it from the very beginning: Fighting the best guys in the world doesn’t pay as good as the circus. I want to join the circus. I’m trying to get that circus money.” As I said, right to my heart. Last week, I waxed poetic about another newly crowned UFC champion, Tyron Woodley, doing his best to finagle a first title defense against either Georges St. Pierre or Nick Diaz instead of accepting legitimate top challenger Stephen Thompson. I applauded his efforts, even if ultimately they prove futile. At this stage in the MMA game, especially with a new ownership group imminently taking over the UFC, it behooves any fighter, especially a current champion, to politick for the biggest fights and most money that they can. Yes, MMA is a legitimate sport, but it nonetheless maintains a degree of spectacle. The biggest fights — that is to say, the most lucrative fights – aren’t always about the best fighting the best or what makes “sense” in terms of rankings. It is a circus. Alvarez, however, is demonstrating an entirely different level of cagefighting wokeness. The minute he finally rose to the undisputed top of the lightweight division, he wasn’t content to just lobby for a big money fight in the Octagon, he actually pulled back the curtain on MMA’s subconscious secret: this sport is the modern carnival. Like Woodley publicly sewering Thompson and trying to drum up hype for a more lucrative fight, Alvarez is deliberately eschewing the righteous potential challengers to the UFC’s lightweight title, the winner of November’s Rafael dos Anjos-Tony Ferguson bout or perpetual challenger-in-waiting Khabib Nurmagomedov. He wants the winner of the UFC 202 main event and frankly, who can blame him? Even before Alvarez took the strap, fighters, media and fans alike were on board for Rafael dos Anjos versus Conor McGregor until the Brazilian’s ankle injury forced him out of the bout and in turn, made Nate Diaz significantly wealthier. If the megalomaniacal McGregor is able to avenge his loss to Diaz at UFC 202, it would hardly be surprising to see him publicly lobby to fight Alvarez for the lightweight strap; it’s not exactly a secret that the “Notorious” one is …

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