For Eddie Alvarez, his fight against Mike Perry would have been different if he fought at the right weight.
The two fighters met at BKFC 56 earlier this month, with Perry ending the match in just the second round. The two fighters made fast shot exchanges in the ring, with Alvarez releasing numerous punches to Perry, who did the same to him. However, Perry’s shots apparently were more effective, with Alvarez having to talk with his cornermen by the end of the second round. After this, his team decided to end the bout due to the fighter’s swollen left eye.
After the bout, Alvarez admitted defeat and shared that he sustained two left orbital fractures. According to the fighter, this failure was all caused by his mistake of losing weight, saying it is the detail he would have changed if he had been given the chance.
“If I could change a couple things, maybe I gave up a little bit too much size and weight,” Alvarez said 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.”
Perry, now crowned the “King of Violence,” expressed disappointment over the opponent’s performance despite predicting it. Nonetheless, Alvarez believes he could offer a better fight under the right weight next time.
“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.
“… 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.”
