Strikeforce heavyweight fighter Antônio “Bigfoot” Silva (14-2) has finally been given an opponent, recently signed Valentijn Overeem, brother of current champ Alistair Overeem.
Before the eventual bout announcement with Overeem, there was talk of Silva facing a number of different Strikeforce heavyweights from champ Alistair to recently signed Josh Barnett.
Speaking to Tatame.com, “Bigfoot” classified the heavyweight division as “a mess” with all of the turmoil from last summers Fabricio Werdum upset over Fedor Emelianenko.
There’re only top athletes, but unfortunately I can only call it a mess because it’s a real mess. Werdum, unfortunately, is injured. Fedor has a contract problem, since M-1 takes care of his career. He champion will only fight whoever he wants to because he’ll fight on another show, and that’s what’s going on… There are top athletes, they’ve hired Barnett, and I hope he comes to make this division even better because he has a great charisma, but I hope it’ll be better next year, because 2010 was a complete messy year for this weight division.
The other weight classes are great, they’ve just hired Gesias, there’s (Josh) Thompson, it’s a great division, and Jacaré’s been doing a great job, Feijão is fighting… The other weight divisions are fine but the heavyweight division is too messy. I think that the champion can’t start picking out names, he has to accept the opponent that the president of the organization chooses for him to fight, the one who deserves a title shot. If it’s Werdum that worths the shot, then you go and fight Werdum, but you don’t pick your opponent. If it’s Fedor, you fight him. The guy says he wants to fight in another organization and is the champion of the event… Let’s see if things get better next year.
Hit the link above to see what “Bigfoot” has to say about another anticipated matchup between UFC heavyweights Cain Velasquez and Junior dos Santos.