There’s a lot of reasons you didn’t know the UFC card this weekend isn’t actually happening on Saturday. Could be the NFL playoffs, maybe it was the national championship game on Monday, or maybe it was something wholly unrelated to head trauma. Either way, consider this your notice: UFC Fight Night 81 takes place this Sunday on FOX Sports 1.
How the card fares with viewers remains to be seen; the UFC is banking on the hopes that fans of Sunday’s game between the Seahawks and the Panthers will be lured over to FS1 after being inundated with commercials like these, but football and MMA have always been strange bedfellows, despite their shared penchant for violence.
Rating concerns aside, there are more than a few excellent fights that have flown under the radar this week, namely the return of Anthony “Showtime” Pettis against former Bellator champion Eddie Alvarez. Why the fight has gone overshadowed isn’t much of a mystery; a bantamweight title fight between TJ Dillashaw and Dominick Cruz, makes any fight seem somewhat inconsequential in comparison.
But Pettis vs. Alvarez is nothing if not meaningful, both for the fighters themselves, and the lightweight division at large.
It harkens back to the days of Bjorn Rebney, if you can believe it. Alvarez was one of the few world-ranked fighters Bellator had at the time, and they were holding on to him as though life itself depended on it. Rather than concede they couldn’t offer Alvarez the kind of money and media attention he wanted by allowing him to end his contract and fight for the UFC, Bellator decided to play hardball and put Alvarez’ career on ice; between October of 2012 and September of 2014, he only managed to get into three professional fist fights.
In that sense, Alvarez was and is one of the last great unicorns; fighters that had never competed in the UFC but appeared more than capable of doing so. Fans, media outlets, and even Dana White himself took to social media in attempts to get “Bjork” Rebney to loosen his iron grip over his lightweight champ, and allow him to fight at the highest level of the sport.
Hindsight being 20/20, it’s clear why Rebney and co. felt they had no other option than hold on to Alvarez as long as they could; his Bellator record was an impressive 6-1, with two Fight of the Year worthy performances. Unfortunately for Alvarez, though, he missed out on more than a few prime years of his career, competing only once in both 2013 and 2014.
Not totally dissimilar, Anthony Pettis was also one of the few fighters competing outside of the UFC that was widely considered to be capable of fighting at the highest level. But where Alvarez was unlucky to be stuck with Rebney, Pettis had the good fortune of competing in the Zuffa-owned WEC at the time. Once the UFC decided to finally fold the WEC fighters in, Pettis found himself with a gold belt strapped around his waist and a highlight reel that will be replayed in the sport for decades to come. Had they both come into the UFC in 2010, it’s possible the two would have traded title shots over the coming years, with one edging the other out on any given night.
But that’s not what happened. Instead, fans have had to wait nearly six years for Alvarez to find himself in the UFC.
What matters now is that we’ve made it, finally. Come Sunday (your second friendly reminder), we will know who the best lightweight outside of the UFC is. Only their both in the UFC now, and neither is atop the heap that is the 155lb division. Pettis dropped his belt to Rafael dos Anjos nearly a year ago while Alvarez is only 1-1 since signing with the UFC in 2014.
In other words, we may not be seeing the best these athletes are capable of. Though Pettis is only 28 years old, he’s been competing on a professional level for nearly a decade, and has gone through several injuries that sidelined him for months at a time. At 32, Alvarez is entering the final stretch of his career while simultaneously competing against the best fighters in the world, which could be a troublesome combination for “The Silent Assassin”.
All of that to say, this is still going to be a hell of a fight. Pettis must rebound from his title loss last year with a big win over Alvarez, otherwise he could risk losing not only his #1 position in the UFC rankings, but a general fall from the title picture as a whole. On the other hand, it feels like Alvarez is yet to truly establish himself in the UFC, but with a big win over a former champion like Pettis, he could find himself in a red-panty night sooner than you might think.
Either way, this is the best fight 2011 could offer, it’s just happening on a Sunday in 2016.
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