Eddie Alvarez thinks he made one mistake against Mike Perry.
This past month, Alvarez squared off against Perry in the main event of BKFC 56, losing by corner stoppage after suffering a broken orbital bone. In the aftermath, Alvarez praised Perry’s durability, saying he was surprised by how well “Platinum” held up to his power shots, and after a few days of reflection on the bout, “The Underground King” thinks he may know what the problem for him was against the face of bare-knuckle boxing.
“If I could change a couple things, maybe I gave up a little bit too much size and weight,” Alvarez said recently on The MMA Hour. “I would change that. I would try to get it at a little bit — I’d try to do it at 165 or something like that, make him come down a little bit. I did give up size. I’ll agree with the audience, I gave up size, and I was OK with that because I still thought I would put Mike Perry away. To this day, I still feel like I could put Mike Perry away. I gave up a little too much size. I would’ve done that differently.
“The fight itself, I got caught with a big shot. I love the way I fought. I wanted to put him away. I wanted to land my shots, I didn’t want to run away from him. I wanted to meet him right in the middle of his shots, same way you would meet someone like Justin Gaethje. I wanted to punch with him and hit in between and eventually knock him out. That’s what we tried to do. We took risks that way and I was OK with that.
“And I almost did. He got really wobbled, we hurt him really bad, really early. Maybe I should’ve got on him. Maybe I should’ve got on him more instead of relaxed too much after I hurt him. Just some small adjustments, but I can’t do anything about a broken orbital.”
The fight was contested at 175 pounds, 20 pounds heavier than Alvarez’s career weight of 155. Heading into the fight, Alvarez insisted that 155 is no longer a possibility for him to make and that he anticipated a speed advantage up at 175. It appears though that Alvarez underestimated the drop off in power he’d have.
“He’s a battle ax. He’s like a zombie,” Alvarez said. “The shots I hit him with, with a bare first, almost 100 percent of the time put most guys down. But that’s why I also think that maybe I gave up too much weight, because in my weight class, that same left hook is putting almost and ‘55er, ‘65er down, for sure, and he was able to stay on his feet with it.”
With two fractures in his left orbital, Alvarez is likely staring down an extended break from fighting. That being said, the former UFC lightweight champion says he has no intention of hanging up the gloves (or lack thereof) and hopes to return to BKFC in 2024, perhaps in a rematch with Perry on slightly more even terms.
“Honestly, that would be the best case scenario. Myself, I would like to get to more of a natural weight. If you’ve seen me, that’s not me. That’s not my body — I’m kind of fat. [Laughs.] I had to hold onto weight I didn’t want to and be bigger than I wanted to be in order to fight at a weight that’s not my weight.
“Look, I took a f****** shot, and me, my coaches, we believed that we could make this happen, and we didn’t. It is what it is. But in a perfect world, I want to be at 165. I want to fight at my natural weight. It would be lovely to get a rematch with him at something more my natural weight. If we could meet somewhere in between, that would be an ideal situation.”