All parties involved admit this pending bout between Andrei Arlovski and Alistair Overeem has temporarily ushered in an awkward time at the vaunted Jackson-Winkeljohn fight team.
As they prepare to meet in the main event of UFC Fight Night 87 on Sunday, it’s clear Arlovski and Overeem are going against the grain. One of MMA’s oldest adages says teammates often won’t fight each other, but these two heavyweights appear not only willing to scrap—they seem eager to do it.
“We’re teammates, but we’re not friends,” Overeem explained at the UFC Unstoppable press conference in March. “We don’t train together. We sparred twice, maybe three times.”
Arlovski seconds that emotion. During the lead-up to this fight, these men have been circling each other like rival salesmen who work at the same office. Polite enough when they see each other at the company Christmas party, but not about to invite the other one out for cocktails afterward.
Perhaps some of that wariness comes because both knew all along this situation was unavoidable.
As head coach Greg Jackson himself is quick to explain, the New Mexico-based team is so big and has so many top fighters it’s inevitable that from time to time they are going to face off against each other. It’s one of the necessary evils of being perhaps the most desirable place on Earth for professional MMA fighters to train.
Especially at heavyweight, where there just isn’t a ton of top talent to go around, guys like Overeem (No. 5 on Bleacher Report’s official 265-pound rankings) and Arlovski (No. 8) likely wouldn’t be able stay away from each other, even if they tried.
This week, Arlovski, Jackson and Mike Winkeljohn sat down with Inside MMA’s Ron Kruck to explain how they’re making the best out of a weird situation:
So all that seems on the up-and-up, though the idea that both Jackson and Winkeljohn will corner Arlovski must be a bit disconcerting for Overeem. If you listen to what Arlovski has been saying lately, the idea that Overeem divided the camp by requesting this fight is a motivating factor for him.
“The most important thing right now is to face and beat Alistair Overeem,” the 37-year-old native of Belarus said during a recent appearance on MMAjunkie Radio (via Junkie’s Dann Stupp and Brian Garcia). “Because from what I know, he asked this for this fight. He kind of put on the spot Greg Jackson and Mike Winkeljohn.”
So there you have it. While nobody is coming right out to say there’s bad blood between them, there also doesn’t seem to be any hesitation from either party about taking this fight. There aren’t any excuses being made. No polite apologies.
And look, it’s understandable if Arlovski feels somewhat protective of his sunny spot down there in the desert.
The former UFC heavyweight champion came to Jackson-Winkeljohn five years ago, on the heels of a particularly difficult stretch in his career. He had lost four straight fights dating back to 2009 and said his previous coaches suggested he retire after a first-round knockout loss to Sergei Kharitonov in Strikeforce in February 2011.
Arlovski sought a second opinion from Jackson, and the longtime coach begged to differ.
The fighter moved to Albuquerque and ever since has credited the team there as responsible for his late-career turnaround. Arlovski has gone 10-2-1 since that loss to Kharitonov, worked his way back into the UFC in 2014 and won four straight bouts in the Octagon before dropping one to current No. 1 contender Stipe Miocic at UFC 195.
By contrast, Overeem is a relative newcomer to Jackson-Winkeljohn. He came to the team during the spring of 2014 after leaving—or maybe wearing out his welcome at—the Blackzilians team in South Florida.
After defeating Brock Lesnar in his UFC debut in December 2011, Overeem was scheduled to fight Junior dos Santos for the heavyweight title, but tested positive for elevated levels of testosterone in the lead-up. Overeem ended up sitting out all of 2012, and when he returned the following year, lost back-to-back matchups to Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva and Travis Browne.
In an interview with Bloody Elbow’s Anton Tabuena in April 2015, Overeem looked back on his move to Blackzilians as “very bad” and said he preferred working at Jackson-Winkeljohn for the game-planning and strategy sessions, among other things.
Since relocating there, he’s gone 4-1, with his only loss coming to Ben Rothwell in September 2014. He heads into this meeting against Arlovski riding a three-fight win streak and is potentially on his way to becoming the heavyweight contender the UFC hoped he’d be when he signed with the company a half-decade ago.
Still, regardless of how this bout came to be, the relationship of the particulars or the tenure of the fighters, it’s a piece of matchmaking that figures to create an uncomfortable situation at Jackson-Winkeljohn.
It’s a team renowned for its chemistry and the fellowship it engenders in its athletes. There’s no telling how the vibe has been changed by having this fight on the books the past few months.
However, Jackson and Winkeljohn are highly regarded for their professionalism and level-headedness. This isn’t a unique situation for them, and by now they should be used to dealing with competing personalities and dueling egos.
Back in 2010, Diego Sanchez left the team when welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre joined. He later returned, and by 2016 Jackson says the team now has “protocols” to keep teammate vs. teammate situations from blowing up into something bigger than they need to be.
“Alistair will come train at different times, Andrei will train at different times, and it will be business as usual,” Jackson told MMAjunkie’s Mike Bohn. “We put protocols in place to deal with [teammates fighting] when it happens. It’s unfortunate. I don’t like it, but it’s part of the job, and I’ll deal with it.”
How Overeem and Arlovski ultimately deal with it is something we won’t know until both guys are in the cage on Sunday afternoon.
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