Eddie Alvarez has his offer. Now it’s a waiting game.

The former Bellator lightweight champ, one of the most coveted MMA free agents in years, has a contract offer in hand from the UFC. That leaves Bellator in a two-week period in which it can match the offer in an attempt to retain the fighter.

Bellator officials on Wednesday told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) that promotion execs are reviewing Alvarez’s offer from the UFC and are expected to announce soon whether they will match it or let him go.

Bellator fighters typically are bound by a 90-day exclusive negotiating period after their deal runs out. But in the case of Alvarez (24-3 MMA, 9-1 BFC), Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney waived what was left on that period to allow Alvarez to test the market sooner

Rebney recently told MMAjunkie.com that he believed Bellator could come up with a deal that would be competitive with what the UFC was likely to offer him.

“It really becomes for us a mathematical analysis,” Rebney said. “We know where we would want to be with Ed, we know what kind of a deal structure would work for Bellator and our partners at Spike TV, and we’re just waiting.

“We’d like to keep him, but it will all boil down to the numbers.”

Alvarez is not the first highly prized free agent to toy with leaving Bellator for the UFC. Former middleweight champion Hector Lombard earlier this year left the promotion and made his UFC debut in July, bringing with him a 25-fight unbeaten streak. Rebney at one point, in published reports, estimated Lombard’s UFC deal, including a signing bonus, to be worth a minimum of $700,000 for his debut. He lost that first fight by split decision to Tim Boetsch at UFC 149 before bouncing back with a knockout of Rousimar Palhares this past weekend at UFC on FX 6 in Australia.

Alvarez, who recently moved his fight camp to the Blackzilians team in South Florida, has two straight first-round knockouts since his upset loss to Michael Chandler at Bellator 58. That fight, regarded as one of the best of 2011, cost him his Bellator lightweight title when he was forced to tap in the fourth round of a back-and-forth fight. He had a seven-fight win streak prior to that loss, his only setback in Bellator.

Alvarez long has been considered one of the top lightweights not in the UFC, along with current Strikeforce champion Gilbert Melendez. In April, he avenged one of only three losses on his record when he stopped Shinya Aoki with punches in the first round. Aoki submitted Alvarez in 2008 in Japan. And in October, in what could prove to be his final Bellator fight, he stopped Patricky “Pitbull” Freire with a head-kick knockout late in the first round.

Alvarez’s resume also includes wins over current Bellator featherweight champ Pat Curran in the lone defense of his Bellator lightweight title, Roger Huerta, Josh Neer and Joachim Hansen. But the one criticism has been that he hasn’t faced the level of competition the UFC’s 155-pound class has to offer.

Sometime before the end of the calendar year, it could be revealed whether he’ll get that opportunity, or if Bellator will retain him to keep one of its biggest stars on the roster just before January’s new deal with Spike TV.

For more on Bellator’s upcoming schedule, stay tuned to the MMA Rumors section of the site.