Alistair Overeem Withdraws From August 15 Strikeforce Title Defense With Lingering Hand Injury
Strikeforce heavyweight champion Alistair Overeem has withdrawn from his scheduled August 15 title defense against Fabricio Werdum as his hand has still not healed from an injury suffered in a May altercation at an Amsterdam nightclub.
Fanhouse was first to report the withdrawal on Tuesday, adding that Werdum will remain on the card against a different opponent, with it yet to be decided whether an interim title will be on the line for the new matchup.
With Overeem now sidelined, the obvious matchup would be having fellow-contender Brett Rogers square off with Werdum for an interim title at the Showtime-televised event, with the titles then being unified when Overeem is able to return to action.
Rogers (10-0) would enter the matchup off the biggest win of his career, a 22-second knockout of Andrei Arlovski in June that pushed his undefeated record to 10-0, while Werdum, who had won back-to-back fights over Gabriel Gonzaga and Brandon Vera, is coming off a first-round knockout loss at the hands of Junior dos Santos.
The August 15 event takes place at the HP Pavilion in San Jose, California and features three additional title fights: Gina Carano vs. Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos for the newly-created 145-pound women’s title, a lightweight championship unification rematch between Josh Thomson and Gilbert Melendez, and a welterweight title bout between Nick Diaz and Joe Riggs
[Pictured: Alistair Overeem]
Loading ...
****ty about Overeem ….. but its time to look for a new champ . Rogers is the guy who can fill the void . A first round KO of werdum would kinda cement his claim .I like how he is willing to be active and take on whoever . He seems to be the real deal with heavy, heavy hands . Werdum fought AA upright and lost a decision, if he tries that with Brett its over quick .
The problem is who does he fight if Overeem stays in Japan or on the shelf ? They would have to import someone bad ass …… If gilbert yvel beats Paul Buenetello maybe he should get a shot .. or vise versa . Another test would be jeff monson … scary dude who has been doing good since losing to sylvia in the UFC .
yeah man monson has been doing great and i would like to see that fight.
yvel or Paul would be a good fight to test if brett can handle some heavy hands like those two.
wtf? overeem withdraws from the title fight, yet he is still going to fight that night. is this weird to anyone besides me?
Overeem has never defended a title he won about 20 months ago, and now backs out of his fight with Werdum with an injury.
Wasn’t there some talk awhile back on I think wikipedia about Overeem defending against Brett Rogers??
An Interim HW champion at the very least is needed, and maybe the promotion should consider stripping Overeem of a title he can’t seem to be bothered to defend.
Yeah, bigchris2328, a whole lot about this Overeem championship run seems weird to me, the least of which is the champ agreeing to fight on the card, but just not defend his belt against Werdum.
Sorry guys, that was a misprint about Overeem staying on the card, the article has been corrected. I will promptly get on Kris about that.
In regards to him being stripped, part of the problem has been there was no one for him to defend against until recently. The other part of the problem is the non-exclusive contract (you know, the type of contract people complain about the UFC not having) which allowed him to sign a contract with DREAM/K1 and get kind of busy over there in Japan.
I think it’s because if he schedualed to fight a non-title fight it’s ok if he is unable to fight due to injury, while if it was a title fight he cannot guarentee his hand being healed in time and with a cancel like that it would suck.
This card just got better if Roggers is fighting Werdum
GO GET’TER DONE ROGERS!!!
He should be stripped, but after cung Le. The worlds laziest mma fighter.
He needs stripped of his title and so does Cung Le.
Cung Le does deserve to get stripped of his belt but I think we should give Overeem one more chance because of the reasons listed above by Justin.
I disagree, because of those same reasons. He made a choice to not defend by going over and fighting for Dream and K1. But I think it’s pretty well known how I feel about non-defending champions, so…maybe I’m a bit biased by that.
Well, StrikeForce has only recently got any Heavyweights (thanks EliteXC). I honestly could not name another HW (off the top of my head) that faught for StrikeForce before they bought out EliteXC (except for Paul Buentello) can you?