PHILADELPHIA (AP) – Eddie Alvarez was punished like a crash test dummy against Conor McGregor. Alvarez’s moment of a lifetime in the main event on one of UFC’s biggest cards was such a lopsided defeat, the lightweight fighter could not bury his sorrow.
With his wife and close friends packed in a van headed from New York to his Philly home, the weight of the wasted night crushed Alvarez.
“Almost the whole ride, I cried the way home,” he said. “In front of my wife, in front of the people that where there. I felt heartbroken. I felt a lot of things. I was angry. I was disappointed.”
Alvarez was just another victim for McGregor.
But to Alvarez, the championship bout at Madison Square Garden against UFC’s A-list star was the pinnacle of a career that started as a Philly street fighter and ran through Bellator before he landed in MMA’s top promotion and won the lightweight championship. In a fight that would have shot Alvarez to stardom with a victory, McGregor instead dropped him three times in the first round before stopping him in the second.