Bellator 76 set for Oct. 12 in Canada, Eddie Alvarez booked for card

Eddie Alvarez is already MMA's biggest free agent – and he still has one fight left on his deal with Bellator Fighting Championships.

Alvarez (23-3 MMA, 7-1 BFC) now has the date and location of that fight. Alvarez will fight at an as-yet unannounced show on Oct. 12 in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, expected to be Bellator 76. The fight, against an opponent expected to be named in the coming days, will take place at Caesars Windsor Hotel & Casino.

MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) on Thursday confirmed the location and Alvarez's participation on the card with sources close to the event. It was first reported by MMA Fighting.

Alvarez, the former Bellator lightweight champion, in April got back in the win column with a quick TKO of Shinya Aoki at Bellator 66 in Cleveland. That win took some of the sting off a 2011 that saw him go 1-1 and lose his 155-pound title.

In April 2011, Alvarez needed all five rounds to get past current featherweight champion Pat Curran to defend his belt at UFC 39. That decision win snapped a streak of seven straight stoppages in his victories. The win over Curran was Alvarez's first defense of the lightweight title he won at Bellator 12 as the promotion's first lightweight tournament champion. After that, his next two Bellator wins were catchweight non-title fights before the matchup with Curran.

But this past November, Alvarez met Season 4 lightweight tournament winner Michael Chandler. And after a back-and-forth fight, Chandler submitted Alvarez midway through the fourth round, snapping his seven-fight win streak and handing him his first loss in nearly three years. The fight earned acclaim as one of the best fights of 2011 – and some publications even had it ahead of UFC 139's main event between Dan Henderson and Mauricio "Shogun" Rua.

But with the Aoki win, Alvarez got back on track. Now he is expected to be one of the most highly prized free agents in recent memory. According to sources with knowledge of the situation, Bellator can match any other contract offer Alvarez might receive after he becomes a free agent. The promotion has three months to do so.

This past May, Alvarez, a Philadelphia-based fighter, attended UFC on FOX 3 in East Rutherford, N.J., and was shown sitting next to UFC president Dana White – adding to speculation that the UFC would be pursuing the 155-pounder once his deal with Bellator was complete.

Not long before that, the UFC signed what had been the most prized free agent from Bellator, middleweight champion Hector Lombard. Lombard debuted with the UFC this past week at UFC 149, losing a split decision to Tim Boetsch in the co-main event in Calgary.

http://mmajunkie.com/news/29891/bellator-76-set-for-oct-12-in-canada-eddie-alvarez-booked-for-card.mma

alvarez vs chris horodecki??? in canada

I've heard Patricky and Ryan Ford at catchweight as the rumors floating around.