Smilin’ Sam Alvey is a fan-favorite knockout artist with a cornerwoman wife who won a reality show who, on balance, the UFC almost certainly loves. That and the fact that he knocked out his opponent, Dan Kelly, in 49 seconds this weekend (Alvey’s third straight first round KO) are probably the only reasons he still has a job, after showing up to his fight with a spray-tan sponsorship on his chest.
“Fighters definitely can’t do that,” Tom Wright, the UFC’s executive for Canada said. “It’s against our policy. You can put your sponsors on your shorts. You can put your sponsors on your shorts, you can put your sponsors on your banner, but you can’t put your sponsors on your body.”
Well, yes, you can put sponsors on your shorts and banners… provided your sponsors pay the UFC a $50,000+ sponsorship tax, and only until July. But it’s easy to understand the UFC’s reasoning here. No one wants to see Roy Nelson come out with a “DUDE WIPES” henna tat on his gut.
It appears the UFC attempted to remove the logo from Alvey’s chest but were unable to. While a punishment was not dealt to Alvey, officials confirmed that he would not repeat the incident again.
“We didn’t see it until before the fight,” Wright said. “We tried to do something to remove it. It was unremovable. But we’ve spoken to Sam and he understands the situation. I guarantee it won’t happen again.” [BloodyElbow]
If I could’ve paid to see footage of UFC interns frantically going at Sam Alvey’s chest with comet and scouring pads I absolutely would have (dude, you couldn’t have done a better job with the stencil outline? Take some pride).
In general, the UFC doesn’t have a great sense of humor when it comes to “creative” walkouts or apparel (just ask Mayhem Miller and Dennis Hallman), so Sam Alvey is surely lucky that he’s been kicking ass lately. Which is a bit of an understatement, actually. Normally he plods around looking sluggish and out of his element for a bit before he unleashes some hell hook of ginger fury that leaves his opponent suddenly in the midst of some came-to-school-naked dream, but last night he didn’t even wait for that. He just knocked Kelly ass over teakettle as soon as he was in range, then nailed him twice more while he was trying to recover. There are few things more enjoyable to watch than a fighter with accurate punches and rocks in his fists.
Which is nice, because Alvey’s aw shucks act is starting to get a little grating. It’s charming that a guy with such deadly power can be such a doofus, but he’s hamming it up a lot lately, and no one wants a manufactured, media-trained doofus. If anything should’ve gotten him fined Saturday, it was his walk-out music: “Hey, Soul Sister” by Train. Which was the worst walk out song of the night, and probably ever (no small feat when Miocic was walking out to Machine Gun Kelly).
By the way, Alvey did not receive a performance bonus, despite one of the more impressive knockouts of the night. Coincidence? I hope not. He may have been snubbed because of the spray tan, but I’d like to think it was because of Train.
“Your sweet moonbeam… The smell of you in every single dream I dream.” I don’t trust anyone who could hear those words on the radio and not want to plow their car into a crowd of people.
