Another incredible tale from one of MMA’s greatest raconteurs, Chael Sonnen.
Before he was a lightweight champion in the UFC and Bellator, Eddie Alvarez held a welterweight world title in an odd little promotion known as Bodog Fighting Championships.
The Underground King fought four times for the promotion, finishing up with a record of 3-1. His one loss, which at the time of writing remains the only knockout loss on his record, came to the much larger Nick Thompson in Russia in 2007. You can check out that fight in full below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glWNaPoR3Rs
Another American MMA star who competed for Bodog was one Chael Sonnen. The former UFC light heavyweight and middleweight title contender went 4-0 in the promotion which included a win over current UFC heavyweight Oleksiy Oliynyk.
The American Gangster recounted a crazy story involving Alvarez clocking a Russian mobster with ties to the promotion during a recent episode of his podcast “You’re Fired”. In typically Chael fashion, he assured his listeners that the tale is mostly true.
“One of the partners in it were these Russian mobsters and we knew they were gangsters, but they’re running Bodog and we’re fighting for Bodog.”
“So we’re out in Russia and after the card they throw a party on a yacht. Eddie Alvarez is at the party and some guy hits a girl that’s one of the ring card girls or something – he physically abuses her – so Eddie just knocks the guy out.”
“Well, that dude is a connected gangster whose boss is throwing this party on this private boat and there was this big to-do – ‘How are we going to handle this? On the one hand we have to kill him and on the other that’s Eddie Alvarez, so what are we going to do? It ended up nothing happened. That part of the story I can 100% confirm is true.”
After dropping that little nugget, Sonnen went onto the urban legend portion of the story, explaining that there was a rumour that these Russian gangsters went one step further to try to deal with the problem. Although he admitted he has no proof that this actually happened.
“Here’s the part I’m speculating. The rumour was that the way that these mobsters handled it was that they took Eddie out somewhere, dug a hole, explained to him what was going to happen and then didn’t do it. That could totally be false, but the first 75% of that story is true and I think there’s a little bit of legs to the other 25%, but Eddie made it home safe.”
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