“I literally dug my own grave and it sickens me.”
You can’t take anything away from what Conor McGregor was able to do to Eddie Alvarez at UFC 205. He landed 32 significant strikes at will and dropped Alvarez three times with pristine accuracy and timing before finishing him with a Matrix-like combination in the second round.
It was incredible.
On the other hand, however, it was a puzzling and disappointing performance from Alvarez. There are ways to beat McGregor — heck, we saw Nate Diaz do it in March and nearly do it a second time in August — but Alvarez drew up the blueprint of exactly what not to do against a rangy southpaw with colossal knockout power.
“The whole [expletive] plan, the whole plan of this whole fight, if we had to sum up the whole plan it was go left and mostly wrestle,” Alvarez told Chael Sonnen on the former UFC star’s podcast. “Not wrestle all the time but go left and put him in wrestling exchanges and put him where he’s uncomfortable.”
Alvarez joins the likes of Jose Aldo and Dustin Poirier as McGregor opponents who let their emotions get the better of them and threw strategy out the window.
“I don’t know if it was after I got hit that I kind of went into fight or flight mode,” Alvarez explained. “But I got hit and I went right and I boxed, I did the opposite of my plan for eight minutes when the whole plan for two months in training was go left and mostly wrestle…To he honest with you, that first shot, I had no clue what it was. I had no clue, and my butt was on the ground, and I remember in my head going ‘what the [expletive] was that?'”
Alvarez added:
“What bugs me about the whole thing is he didn’t do anything we didn’t prepare for, I have no one to blame but myself for that and that’s what kind of [messes] me up about it and gets me angry. It would be easier if I could go back to my coach and be like ‘you son of a bitch, you didn’t tell me this was going happen.’ We literally got ready for all this and there’s a difference between knowing and doing. We knew, but I didn’t execute.
“I’ve been [on my social media channels] and I’m [hearing] that I threw the fight. People are like ‘You threw the fight, you threw the fight.’ I literally can understand the people’s frustrations with me and them telling me that. When I watch the fight personally myself, I’m like I did everything to lose this [expletive] fight. I did everything. I couldn’t have done worse for myself. I don’t know if it was because I got buzzed in the beginning of the fight. I can’t really put my finger on it. I fumbled 10 times and you can’t win the game fumbling.
“I’m hoping that we can get a couple more really good fights and get back into title contention really soon. That wasn’t a testament to who I am or how I fight. I had a bad night, a terrible night, a bad dream.”
Alvarez said he plans on returning to the cage in 2017 but doesn’t believe a rematch with McGregor will happen anytime soon because of the one-sided nature of the fight.
As for McGregor, Alvarez thinks the next thing for the Irish superstar would be fighting for the welterweight title but isn’t sure if the UFC will let him do that. Whoever fights McGregor next will undoubtedly watch UFC 205’s main event and takes notes on what to avoid.
“I would hope people learn from what I did,” Alvarez said.
