Strikeforce Roundup: Heavyweight Champ Overeem Continues to Fight Overseas, Bouts Confirmed for “Fedor vs. Rogers” Prelims, and More
Posted by Kris Karkoski on Oct 19, 2009 at 5:29 pm ET18 Comments
Strikeforce heavyweight champ Alistair Overeem, who has yet to fight again for the promotion since winning the title in November 2007, returned to MMA action overseas over the weekend, dominating Tony Sylvester at Ultimate Glory 11 in Amsterdam, Netherlands before finishing the fight with a guillotine choke in just 83-seconds. Overeem will fight again this weekend at DREAM 12 against James Thomson before he’s expected to return to Strikeforce to defend the title.- A trio of bouts have been added to the undercard of Strikeforce: Fedor vs. Rogers, as Erin Toughill vs. Marloes Coenen, John Kolosci vs. Shamar Bailey, and Nate Moore vs. Louis Taylor are slated for the preliminary card of the CBS-televised event.
- Undefeated welterweight prospect Roger Bowling (6-0) has signed with Strikeforce, with his debut for the promotion to-be-determined.
- The main card for Strikeforce Challengers 5 on November 20 in Kansas City is set, with Tyron Woodley vs.Rudy Bears, Erik Apple vs. Bobby Voelker, Rafael “Feijao” Cavalcante vs. Aaron Rosa, Kim Couture vs. Kerry Vera, and Sarah Kaufman vs. Takayo Hashi featured on the Showtime broadcast.
- Shane Del Rosario will take on Brandon Cash in a battle of unbeaten heavyweights at Strikeforce Challengers 4 on November 6.
Pictured: Alistair Overeem
Tags: Aaron Rosa, Alistair Overeem, Bobby Voelker, Erik Apple, Erin Toughill, John Kolosci, Kerry Vera, Kim Couture, Louis Taylor, Marloes Coenen, Nate Moore, Rafael Feijao, Roger Bowling, Rudy Bears, Sarah Kaufman, Shamar Bailey, Takayo Hashi, Tyron Woodley
Loading ...
If Overeem isn’t scheduled to defend the title by February, the title should be stripped. I was annoyed enough with Rampage going on TUF 7 and holding the title for 9 months. I was also annoyed with Penn hanging on to the LW title for over a year to stroke his ego with GSP, but this has just got out of hand. IMO.
Apparently you need to be reminded of Strikeforce’s lack of competition for him for nearly a year, and their lack of events for five months.
OMG thank you. I’ve been waiting for anyone else besides myself to bring this little fact up to people.
The same people who I’m sure were not upset at all or even aware Overeem didn’t fight a single time in Strikeforce during 2008 either which was no fault of his own.
I see what your saying figs.Although some of is justified,it’s still frustrating to see title holders just sit on there belt 8-9 months or longer.GSP of course being the exception.He seems to be on every other card.(slight exaggeration of course)
slight exaggeration?
Just look at what Lung did. Strikeforce gives a fighter a belt and doesn’t talk to him for like 1 or 2 years.
What’s does your statement even mean? Give who a belt? You do know that you win a title by beating someone in the ring or cage, perhaps its the vegas heat but I’m confused!
I really don’t see Overeem fighting for Strikeforce unless maybe its against Fedor on national television. I think between K-1 and Dream he is probably making very good money. Why risk that to come to the US where you are not a known name and fight for less money?
Well he was booked twice over the summer, but his hand injury, and subsequent infection kept him out. Since then, it doesn’t appear that Coker has tried to line anything up with him. Partly due to the other four top heavy weights in Strikeforce being booked for November 7.
Overeem doesn’t have a “champions clause” in his contract, a mistake that Coker has admitted, the fact that Overeem “re~signed” with FEG kinda bothered me, and the “hand injury” just is assinine….. Overeem has stated that he wants to defend the title in 2010 when he has competition, honestly it has to be the winner of the Nov 7th bout between Fedor and Rogers, if he doesn’t fight the winner his belt should be stripped and his Strikeforce contract should be torn up and he should be sued for breach of contract but that’s a different story and likely just my opinion!
What if Coker doesn’t even bother to offer him the winner of Fedor v. Rogers, but instead wants him to face Werdum? How should Overeem be sued for breach of contract if Coker doesn’t offer him Fedor/Rogers? Or are you assuming that will be who Coker offers him, and then going off that assumption saying “If he doesn’t fight the offered fighter…”
The big reason he won’t fight here is a lack of quality horse meat for him to feed on
I’ve read a whole boatload of excuses as to why Overeem hasn’t defended his Strikeforce HW title in 23 months, lack of competition, promotion inactivity, hand injury, blahblahblah, but after a while they are just that.
Excuses.
We’re not talking about 6 months here, or even a year. We’re talking almost 2 years, or more, and an incredibly bogus hand injury that is so weirdly specific it only hurts Overeem IF he were to fight for Strikeforce, but not for DREAM or this Ultimate Glory thing.
Regardless of what the legitimate causes are, if any, this is a glaring example of why the Strikeforce business model of not signing exclusive fighter contracts is a flawed business model in our sport.
On the plus side for Strikeforce, they’ve signed Shane Del Rosario for another fight, and I think that guy has an incredibly bright future in MMA…
The initial injury was a break, and subsequent infection that nearly caused him to lose his hand. The initial injury was sustained in mid may, three months later he still wasn’t ready to go. Possibly from the injury, and lack of being able to train. It was a further six weeks after that before he fought in K-1, making a total of over four months from the time of the initial injury. Six weeks is more than enough time to go from “not healed enough to train and then fight” to “healed enough to train and then fight with big gloves.” Add a further month before he fought in MMA gloves at Golden Glory.
Add in the fact that Overeem would likely need considerably less time to prepare for a K-1 fight than an MMA fight against a ground ace like Werdum, and it makes sense that he could fight K-1 six weeks after he couldn’t fight MMA.
I tip my hat to your logic sir!
I once read an interview with Scott Coker wherein he commented that he’s hoping to “provide an alternative [to the UFC] by providing something other orgs do not”.
And FYI, I’m paraphrasing Coker’s comments, for the sake of accuracy.
Unfortunately, with “champions” like Cung Le and now Alistair Overeem, what Strikeforce is providing are champions that can’t or won’t defend their titles over unreasonably long periods of time…
I recently read about a statement from Coker and the head of Dream in which the two mentioned a desire to “unify” the two organizations titles. They failed to address the fact that the two organizations only have three sitting champions each, out of six weight classes, the only one of which they both have a champion in is lightweight.
Look, you are going on about how Overeem should be stripped because he “doesn’t care about defending the belt.” When the fact of the matter is, the freaking promotion doesn’t seem to give a flying fornication about it’s championships in the first place. If they did, they wouldn’t have had two events headlined by catch weight fights, and they wouldn’t have tried to get Nick Diaz as their welterweight champion. They also would have stripped Cung Le of his belt, rather than talking about Stripping Josh Thomson after he got hurt. Then there’s that whole putting champions in non title fights thing (Josh Thomson vs. Ashe Bowman). Of course they also would have given us Fedor vs. Overeem for the belt in Fedor’s first fight, instead of trying to book Overeem v. Werdum, and Fedor vs. Rogers in some whacked out tournament.
“Flying fornication”
Thats a classic, my friend.
Also, fair point regarding Strikeforce being at least as responsible for this title situation than the champions are.
Maybe moving forward, as the Strikeforce Alliance comes together, Coker will have a more clearly defined and stringent title defense policy?
And its not entirely unfair to say that with a new network deal inked, Bellator suddenly becomes a player in Strikeforce’s figurative backyard, so that may also help motivate Coker to run certain aspects of Strikeforce with a bit more clarity, authority and focus…