Scott Coker, Strikeforce’s CEO, promised fans that the promotion would put more of it’s heavyweights into the cage in the coming year, including champion Alistair Overeem.
Many of the promotions heavyweights have underperformed in the past year, with only one fight under their belts, most notably it’s champion. Alistair Overeem has only defended his title once since winning the title two years ago.
“It’s very clear in our agreement with Alistair that we have booking priority,” Coker said of allowing Overeem to fight in K-1. “So we could have easily said no, but then is it really fair to him? It’s a personal goal of his. Let him go try to be the best standup fighter in the world. … The best strikers in the world fight in K-1 in Japan. He already won his first fight. I thought he looked amazing, and now he’s going to go into the finals and fight Tyrone (Spong), who is no joke. I think Alistair is going to have his hands full with that fight, but we’re going to support him and we’re going to wish him well and hopefully he can win the whole tournament. Then he can come back the Strikeforce champion and the K-1 heavyweight champion. As far as accomplishments, I’ve never seen that done before.”
“One thing I can tell you is all these guys … Alistair, Fedor, Fabricio, Josh Barnett, ‘Bigfoot’ (Antonio Silva), (Sergei) Kharitonov, Andrei Arlovski, Brett Rogers, all those guys are all going to fight each other in 2011.”
Coker was a guest on this past Wednesday’s episode of “Beatdown” on the Sherdog Radio Network.