In a division where advanced age seems to be a strength, there is no end in sight to Alistair Overeem’s UFC title hopes.
For most heavyweights, there will always be more chances until everything completely falls apart—for Exhibit A, see Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva—and at least for right now, the 35-year-old Overeem still has more to offer.
But in the UFC, timing is often more important than anything else. Find yourself in the right place at the right time, and your life can completely change.
Look no further than the top of the heavyweight division for that.
Stipe Miocic has a modest two-fight win streak to his credit but finds himself fighting for the belt on May 14 only because actual No. 1 contender Cain Velasquez was injured. The UFC has holes to plug, and sometimes it’s not as important to be the perfect piece as it is to be the best available one.
Overeem may be about to find himself in the very advantageous position of checking both of those boxes.
After Sunday’s spectacular second-round TKO win over Andrei Arlovski—his fourth straight victory—Overeem boasts the second-best streak in the division behind champ Fabricio Werdum’s. And with the title fight between Werdum and Miocic just a week away, Overeem is perfectly situated on a parallel timeline for return.
With only one missing major title on his decorated resume, he wasted no time in reminding the UFC brass of that fact.
“We’re going to get that belt in November. November 12 at Madison Square Garden,” he told the fans at Ahoy Rotterdam in his adopted home country of the Netherlands. “We’re going to let Werdum and Stipe do their thing, and then we’re going to get the belt, and next year we’ll be defending the belt here at Amsterdam Arena.”
Everyone loves a man with a plan, but the UFC has not yet committed to anything past Werdum-Miocic.
Still, given the stagnancy in the heavyweight title picture over the last few years— Velasquez, Frank Mir, Junior Dos Santos, Antonio Silva and Werdum have been the only players involved in the last five years—the UFC should be chomping at the bit to get some fresh blood involved.
Even better if that name is one that many audiences are familiar with.
Overeem has been a mainstay of heavyweight combat for a decade, capturing belts in Strikeforce, DREAM and K-1, and as recently as in 2012, he was set up to fight Dos Santos for the UFC belt until failing a random drug test and dashing his own hopes.
While he is no longer in the “Ubereem” phase of those days, his game has shown some maturation in the past two years, with more emphasis on defense and self-preservation to go with the sustained bursts of violence that became his trademark.
That’s exactly how he wrote the ending against Arlovski, holding his Team Jackson-Winkeljohn teammate to 29 strikes landed on 46 attempts while landing 33 of his 41 own attempted strikes, according to FightMetric.
The end came with a sequence that flashed his creativity and agility, as he used a crane kick-left hook combo to floor Arlovski before finishing with a hail of ground strikes.
Overeem spoke about his mindset at the post-fight press conference:
We know he has very dangerous hands, he’s got a very dangerous acceleration. He’s tough, he’s a fighter, he’s a former champ, he has a lot of experience, fought a lot of top guys. Definitely, pick your shots and don’t be too hasty. Of course, we were fighting at home, so maybe there is crowd pressure. Just be relaxed, just do your thing. Be in the moment. Be with the flow. I’m in very good shape at the moment. I’m in peak shape. If I’m flowing, I do a lot of damage. That was just the main thing: Just be in your flow, and the finish or the domination will come automatically.
Those instincts led to a combination you simply don’t see out of big men, just another highlight-reel moment to add to his long list of them.
Overeem now appears poised to follow up on the momentum of the moment to push for the title fight. While he still may have a few years ahead of him, he’s also quite cognizant of how long it’s taken to return to this point.
Heavyweight MMA can be decided on a single strike.
He’s experienced that himself, suffering two crushing comeback defeats against Antonio Silva and Travis Browne, both in 2013, that set him back and forced him to rebuild himself.
At the time, Overeem was mostly left for dead, with many of the sport’s observers believing that his chin had been compromised beyond repair after years of combat sports. In addition, there was a belief that Overeem—a long-rumored, once-busted performance-enhancing drug user—would be further affected by the UFC’s institution of year-round drug testing through the United States Anti-Doping Agency.
Instead, he has shown late-career evolution with a finely refined approach.
After over 50 MMA fights and 15 kickboxing fights, Overeem has a collection of belts that few combat sports athletes can ever hope to match. But there remains one gaping hole in that collection, one that he imminently plans to address.
“I believe the ride is up,” he told Fox backstage announcer John Gooden after the fight. “I believe the next fight will be for the UFC heavyweight title. The preparation will commence this week. We’ll take one day off, and on Tuesday, I’ll be back in the gym working my butt off for that title.”
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