The Wells Fargo Center waited all night in anticipation for their hometown hero, Eddie Alvarez’s music to hit. A fight multiple years and multiple promotions in the making, BKFC did the right thing by making this match the main event of the evening, even over a World Heavyweight Championship bout. The two long time mainstays in the combat sports world would not disappoint.
Jeremy Stephens has been planting his antagonist seeds since he stepped foot in Philadelphia earlier this week. The same weekend that the Philadelphia Eagles will host their division rival Washington Commanders for the right to go to the Super Bowl, Stephens made sure he came prepared with plenty of ammo.
Stephens said Philadelphia is a second-place, incompetent city. He said the fans rallying behind Alvarez had no bearing on the fight. He called Alvarez “old, slow, and stiff” and said he was going to put him in a morgue where his after party would be held. Having fought 33 times in the UFC, Stephens knows how to internally focus on himself while drawing loads of heat to sell a fight.
Eddie Alvarez, a former UFC and Bellator Lightweight Champion, just needed to say the right things. When he opined that this fight is the pinnacle of his career because of where he is fighting and who he has behind him, that fight was sold. All that was left was the fisticuffs.
No real damage was done to either man in the first round. The most action early on actually came from the fans, whose chants in support of Alvarez were deafening, and somehow their disdain for Stephens was even louder.
Alvarez would find his stride starting in round 2, getting the better of the first melee with Stephens. Having done just enough to earn the first round win, Alvarez entered the second intermission with a 2-0 lead.
But it was Jeremy Stephens in round 3 who registered the first knockdown of the evening, putting Alvarez on the canvas. That gave Stephens the confidence he needed, and he continued to pounce. Before the round was over, Alvarez was down again.
Eddie Alvarez took his time standing up. He got to his corner under his own power, but the devastation behind Stephens’ punches clearly took their toll. Stephens had fun goading the fans while Alvarez sat in his corner stool.
Alvarez’s coach, Mark Henry, did not approve of his motor responses from the corner. Doing what any responsible coach would have done, he threw in the towel on Alvarez’s behalf.
Jeremy Stephens walked into Eddie Alvarez’s city and had over 17,000 people chorusing the boo birds. It did not phase him in the slightest. After 3 rounds and 6 minutes of bare knuckle brawling, Stephens notched a massive victory by way of corner stoppage TKO, and he may have also set up a date with Conor McGregor down the line.
Asked about how it felt to suck the air out of a hostile crowd, Stephens stuck true to the mentality that has defined his entire career. He said, “I wasn’t fighting the crowd. I sucked the life and f*****g just broke a man, ‘The Underground King’, their stallion, their king, right? I took him out. I wasn’t fighting the crowd, I was literally just…. I was just proving something to myself.”
