By the time Alistair Overeem arrived in the UFC in late 2011, he was already poised to take over the world.
The headhunting Dutch striker was riding high on 10 consecutive victories. Dating back to the fall of 2007, Overeem had built a streak that included nine overall stoppages, four knockouts and eight bouts that didn’t make it out of the first round.
He was among MMA’s most decorated big men, having captured titles in both Strikeforce and Dream as well as grand-prix-tournament victories in Pride and K-1.
When he blew through former champion Brock Lesnar in just two minutes and 26 seconds in his Octagon debut at UFC 141 it seemed to announce the arrival of the fight company’s next great heavyweight.
Unfortunately, it didn’t work out like that.
Not even close.
Fast-forward nearly five years and Overeem will finally get his chance to fight for the heavyweight title at Saturday’s UFC 203. To complete his unexpectedly rambling road to redemption, all he has to do is defeat current champion Stipe Miocic in the American’s hometown of Cleveland, Ohio.
Overeem’s rollercoaster UFC career to this point has included a surprising number of downs and ups that mostly proved much slower in coming than nearly anyone expected. Now 36 years old, he’s running out of chances to live up to the potential that was so evident before he even arrived in the UFC.
“Life has a way of not giving you what you want so easily,” Overeem told Yahoo’s Kevin Iole this week. “You have to work for it—and even when you work really hard and think you’ve done all the right things, things come up that kind of deliver another setback.”
At least some of those setbacks have been of his own making.
The UFC clearly wanted to fast-track Overeem to a title shot back in 2011. On the heels of his short-and-sweet victory over Lesnar matchmakers booked him against then-champion Junior dos Santos at UFC 146 in May 2012.
That fight never happened.
In early April of that year, a Nevada State Athletic Commission drug test popped Overeem for elevated levels of testosterone. The fighter claimed the positive test was the result of an anti-inflammatory treatment proscribed by his doctor, but the UFC pulled him from the Dos Santos bout and the NSAC barred him from applying for a license for the next nine months.
This turn of events did not necessarily send shock waves through the industry.
Even leading up to his bout with Lesnar, Overeem had experienced drug-testing issues. The NSAC had trouble soliciting a test sample from the fighter prior to the fight and only granted him a conditional license to appear in the UFC 141 main event.
All of this compounded the suspicions of some fans, who watched Overeem’s physical transformation from a lanky light heavyweight early in his career to the enormous heavyweight who even out-hulked the hulking Lesnar by the time of their clash.
Overeem’s stellar run of victories from 2007 to 2011 had mostly taken place overseas, and the perception was that the first time he faced an advanced testing regimen operated by one of the biggest and most powerful athletic commission in the U.S., he failed.
Following his victory over Lesnar, Overeem missed nearly 14 months of action owing to his testing issues. When he returned at UFC 156, he lost to Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva via third-round knockout.
Then he lost again, again by knockout—this time to Travis Browne.
All told, Overeem went 1-3 from February 2013 to September 2014. It was the sort of disastrous run that threatened to define the late stages of his career and caused people to look askance at all the success he’d had fighting in international locations.
Suddenly, the big money that UFC had laid out to land him seemed wasted, and his nickname—Ubereem, a riff on the German word for “superman”—read like a sly wink and nod to some longstanding malfeasance.
But the fighter himself wasn’t about to go quietly.
“I fell off the horse and I climbed back on the horse,” Overeem told Iole. “I’ve worked really hard. I haven’t quit. I kept doing the right things, because I know if you do the right thing, that you’ll be rewarded.”
Beginning in December 2014, Overeem has unexpectedly righted the ship. He’s won four fights in a row—including three knockouts and a long-awaited victory over Dos Santos—and stands ready for the championship opportunity that eluded him early in his UFC career.
He’s going off as a slight underdog to the new champion, according to Odds Shark. Then again, almost nothing can accurately be predicted in the topsy-turvy heavyweight division, where a single punch or a single mistake can end a fight on the spot.
If things were a little bit less unpredictable, in fact, Miocic might not be here right now.
He emerged as the surprise titlist when he dropped Fabricio Werdum via first-round KO at UFC 198. Miocic is 6-1 in his last seven fights, with the only loss coming as a razor-close decision defeat to Dos Santos that won both competitors Fight of the Night honors in December 2014.
Granted, it seems like a fairly loaded task for the UFC to saddle Miocic with making his first title defense in his hometown—especially in a city with as heartbreaking an athletic legacy as Cleveland. Because he traveled to Curitiba, Brazil, to defeat Werdum, however, perhaps this feels like an easy assignment for the new champ.
It also marks Overeem’s seventh straight UFC fight outside of Nevada. To win, he’ll have to contend with Miocic’s overall quickness as well as the champion’s wrestling game. If he can keep it on the feet, however, and keep Miocic off his bicycle, it’s possible Overeem’s power could win the day.
The only thing we know for sure about this bout is that the crowd will be solidly in the champ’s corner:
A victory here could transform our view of Overeem’s entire career. At the moment, it threatens to be defined by doubts over his performance-enhancing drug use.
But if he is able to win the heavyweight title during an age where the UFC has greatly stepped-up its testing procedures, he’ll stand a much better chance at being remembered for something else.
Perhaps for being a champion.
“This is the last big one,” Overeem told Iole. “I’ve dedicated my life to achieve this goal. It’s been nonstop training, eating, sleeping, getting better as a mixed martial artist, getting better as a fighter. It’s taken years to get to this point, and I’m pleased with the result.”
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