Alistair Overeem recently signed a new contract with the UFC. Earlier this week, Overeem said he did not talk to any other companies aside from the UFC, but now Bellator president Scott Coker says otherwise. Coker told MMAFighting that Bellator MMA passed on making an offer to Overeem when he was a free agent.
“I don’t want to make a big deal out of it, but, of course, there were negotiations going on,” Coker told MMAFighting. “It’s true that Alistair wasn’t talking to me directly because his agent or manager or lawyer was talking to me. I think that’s kind of what the story is, and negotiations went back and forth, and at the end of the day, we chose not to make an offer. And really what it came down to was a value proposition of what he wanted and what he thought was the market value for him. So that’s what it really comes down to.”
Overeem says he’ll be headlining UFC Fight Night 87 on May 8th.