Judge rules against Eddie Alvarez - can't sign yet with UFC

U.S. District Judge Jose Linares ruled today against granting Eddie Alvarez an injunction against Bellator's claim that they had matched his contract.

What this means is Alvarez is not yet able to sign with UFC, and he will almost surely not be able to fight on the 4/27 show in Newark, NJ at the Prudential Center, which was scheduled as his debut.

Linares ruled that Alvarez's attorneys did not today at the hearing show a reasonable probability of winning the case in the end, nor show that irreparable harm would be done if Alvarez was not granted the injunction and allowed to fight.

The key is that Alvarez's contract gave him a cut of the PPV for his first fight, and being on the Jon Jones vs. Chael Sonnen show, if that show were to do 600,000 s, which may be a lot estimate, Alvarez would receive a $600,000 bonus.

Unless his debut fight was on a show that would be a similar or better number, his PPV bonus would be less, and it could be considerably less or even negligible depending on what fight he was to debut on.

The judge did write that a judge or jury could find that Alvarez fighting on Spike is not matching him fighting on FOX, and thus Bellator didn't match the contract.  However, Linares refused to make that ruling today.

He also ruled that he could not rule that Alvarez not fighting on 4/27 would be a lost career opportunity.  Linares wrote to grant that, the court would have to rule on what might happen based on his participation in the event and said the court could make no such assumptions.