Overeem-Rogers, Villasenor-Santos Likely For Strikeforce on June 6th
A heavyweight championship bout between current title-holder Alistair Overeem and challenger Brett Rogers as well as a middleweight bout between Joey Villasenor and Evangelista “Cyborg” Santos are the latest additions to Strikeforce’s June 6th event.
Carmichael Dave at Sports 1140 and MMAjunkie respectively reported the bouts on Monday.
Alistair Overeem
Since claiming the belt in late-2007 Overeem (29-11) has won three-straight bouts but has not yet defended the title. Rogers (9-0) earned the championship opportunity by winning all nine of his professional fights, including a victory over Abongo Humphrey earlier this month.
Villasenor (26-6), a King of the Cage, PRIDE, and EliteXC veteran, has not been in action since a May 2008 victory over Phil Baroni. Santos (16-12) has lost three of his last four fights, most recently falling to Siyar Bahadurzada due to injury at Sengoku 5 in September.
Both matchups are expected to be televised on the Showtime-broadcast main card.
Strikeforce: Lawler vs. Shields is scheduled to take place on June 6th at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis, Missouri. The event is headlined by Robbie Lawler vs. Jake Shields and is also slated to include Nick Diaz vs. Scott Smith.
Tags: Alistair Overeem, Brett Rogers, evangelista santos, joey villasenor
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It’s about time he defended the title. He has been champion for almost 2 years and hasn’t defended it once. He doesnt want to fight in America because they test for steroids here. Horse meat my A$$.
I think part of the reason he hasn’t defended has been the lack of a legit challenger in Strikeforce. Rogers seems to be legit, but we’ll definitely find out June 6th.
Timcat,
All I can say is Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha,that’s too funny.
His last fight (MMA) was 11/9/2008, and perhaps he has just been working on getting out of his K~1 contract since then.. Since completing his K~1 contract he hasn’t had very nice things to say about the Org.
The depth of the StrikeForce HW division is well not there what so ever and for them to give Rodgers a crack at the champ is interesting imo, never the less we all will get another oppritunity to see Overeem fight on US soil and ya he will be tested in more ways than one, cuz Brett is going to bring the fight to Overeem….. We shall see but the June 6th card is starting to look pretty damn good imo…
Agreed on the card looking pretty good, despite the dumb catch weight fights.
The constant Catch Weight thing is well bothering me too, but there must be some reason and we get to see Shields v Lawler (yay), hopefully after these few catch weight battles we will see more WW v WW type battles, people working towards a titles and such…. Time will tell………..
wasnt rogers the guy who wanted to beat down kimbo sluce? too bad we’ll never see that. rogers would make kimmy cry…
Yes when EliteXC was in business Rogers wanted to fight Kevin Ferguson to show everyone that 1. he was a “bittch” 2. wasn’t a real MMA fighter 3. didn’t deserve to be the Main Event
Sometimes you gotta pick a fight to get “noticed” and yes I do believe that Rogers is a better fighter than Kevin Ferguson, I actually think that Rogers would have won that fight pretty easily but we won’t know now that EliteXC is no more… Plus the Shaw’s wouldn’t put their “cash cow” in a fight that they didn’t think he could win easily…
I’m not 100% sold on Brett yet, but he is getting an oppritunity to make something out of his MMA career and well I hope the best for him, he talks alot of shhh and has been doing pretty good up to this point, he is however taking a huge step up in competition by squaring off against Overeem, not a gimme fight for either and I think we all expect Overeem to win this battle, but he could get dropped by Brett’s dirty boxing, interesting
i know rogers doesn’t look pretty like machida but at his weight those career ending blows get the job done unless you are fighting fedor or maybe carwin.