It's basically Alistair Overeem day here at Bloody Elbow. Mike Fagan spent time fawning over Alistair's changing body and now I take a look at his last five fights. We've covered it already, but Overeem's competition has not necessarily been anything to write home about. Still, if you're fighting guys like Tony Sylvester and James Thompson, you need to beat them and beat them badly. And that's what Overeem does.
This is only focused on MMA bouts, so the K-1 World Grand Prix title does not fit in.
Vs. Tony Sylvester - 10/17/09
What's a Tony Sylvester? He's the guy who tripped over the lip of the YAMMA pit in the second bout of the PPV, quickly bringing and end to the notion that an upward slanted edge of the fighting surface would be more likely to result in fights that didn't go to the ground. oh, and he lost that quarter final bout to Chris Tuscherer.
He's also the guy who spent his bout with Overeem looking like he might start to cry at any time. This was a guy who came into the bout with an 11-2 record with all of his wins coming by TKO or submission. Clearly this wasn't a legitimate test for Overeem though and really it was a little under 90 seconds of Alistair landing knees and punches, knocking Sylvester down until locking in the mercy guillotine rather than punching his head into the eigth row.
Vs. James Thompson - 10/25/09
Thompson's claim to fame is obviously beating up Kimbo Slice until he exhausted himself, had his ear explode and was stopped by punches while still standing. Beyond that, he is well known for getting knocked out with some degree of regularity.
Given that he'd already been knocked out nine times entering the bout with Overeem, but only submitted once. Alistair opted to finish him in just over thirty seconds with a guillotine choke. Okay, so maybe it wasn't intentional and he was looking for the knockout (a safe bet given that he almost jumped out of the arena on a flying knee attempt) but style points were earned as he embarrassed the oft-embarrassed Thompson, and did it a little over a week after the Sylvester fight.
Vs. Kazuyuki Fujita - 12/31/09
Fujita's head is so hard that when Ken Shamrock hit it, the resulting shockwaves caused Ken to have a heart attack. We'll ignore that he had since been TKO'ed by the much smaller Wanderlei Silva in 2006 and by Travis Wiuff in 2008 and just choose instead to focus on the good times.
The typical moment of someone touching Overeem and then reeling and bouncing off the ropes or cage without even being hit took place early. Then a knee to the head by Overeem and another. One more for good measure and Fujita tumbled out between the middle ropes, trying to hold his face on after Alistair kneed it off.
Vs. Brett Rogers - 05/15/10
Rogers' reputation coming into the fight was absolutely mostly based on his quick knockout of the fragile chinned Andrei Arlovski, but the fight he put up against Fedor Emelianenko didn't really hurt his reputation. Rogers was a big, strong heavyweight with power in both hands.
Unfortunately, Overeem is a bigger, stronger heavyweight with more power in his hands, elbows, legs, knees...and so on. It was clear early when Rogers tried to get inside and Overeem pushed him away with ease that something broke in Brett. He started to go backward, eating kicks to the body and legs. While Rogerrs went to his jab he eventually tried to close distance. Overeem threw him to the ground like nothing and followed him down with punches. Rogers was lucky that this was old Strikeforce rules with no elbows as Overeem was in side control and could have taken his face home with him. Instead it was Rogers on his back eating punches from the patient goliath. Finally, Overeem opened up and bombed Rogers out with huge punches.
Vs. Todd Duffee - 12/31/10
People can pretend all they want that no one ever thought much of Duffee but he was a big time heavyweight prospect after knocking out Assuerio Silva and following that up with the seven second KO of Tim Hague in his first UFC bout. He was trouncing Mike Russow until he gassed in the third and got knocked out a a punishment for being sloppy.
He took the fight with Overeem on short notice and Alistair showed the class of a true gentleman by not making him work too hard. Duffee tried to come out hard but was pushed around, ate a few knees to the body and then a right hand, short left hook combo left him draped over the rope after only 19 seconds.
With his last two fights Alistair Overeem proved that he is the black hole where power punching heavyweight prospects go to die.