Strikeforce: Overeem vs Werdum: A Look at Fabricio Werdum
Bleacher Report’s Matthew Ryder:
With the opening round of the Strikeforce Heavyweight Grand Prix concluding Saturday night in Dallas, most people who don’t know headliner Fabricio Werdum from his swift throttling of Fedor Emelianenko know him as a faceless brutal knockout on UFC star Junior dos Santos’ highlight reel.
As he stands only hours away from another big challenge in Strikeforce heavyweight champion Allistair Overeem, so is the paradox of his career:
What is Fabricio Werdum?
Is he a top-flight heavyweight, a man who has deservedly sat as high as third on the heavyweight rankings of credible MMA Web sites, ahead of names such as Dos Santos, Brock Lesnar, and the very champion he’ll meet Saturday?
Is he a grappler-turned-mixed martial artist who has benefited from generally favorable matchups that allowed him to display his considerable skills?
Is he somewhere in the middle—not quite what the Emelianenko win had people thinking but not what the Dos Santos KO suggested either?
It’s almost impossible to set on an answer.