There was a lot of hype surrounding Alistair Overeem going into his fight with Fabricio Werdum.
For years, Overeem has been dominating his opponents in the heavyweight division and recently people have been toting him as the man to take out guys like Junior dos Santos and Cain Velasquez.
The issue with these speculations are they were just that—speculative.
Until his bout with Fabricio this passed Saturday, Overeem had not competed against a top ten heavyweight. His string of victories, while impressive, were against lesser competition and so they meant little.
Now that Alistair has finally fought a top ten opponent in Werdum, we have a tangible measuring stick to compare him to the division’s elite.
I don’t mean to get all “Georges St. Pierre” on you guys, but I was absolutely not impressed with Alistair’s victory this weekend.
To the dismay of many, the striking portions of the fight were actually pretty even. Alistair was able to land the more significant shots, but Werdum landed the most punches. Surprisingly, ‘Reem wasn’t able to capitalize on his reach advantage and Fabricio was able to land shots pretty much whenever he tried to.
The reason Werdum lost this fight is he kept going for takedowns and not getting them. Then he would pull guard, effectively giving Alistair top position, and he was unable to do anything from the bottom. Fabricio was so sure he needed to get this fight to ground that he didn’t realize he was doing pretty well on the feet.
Both fighter’s cardio looked horrible; they both seemed exhausted by the end of the second round, Werdum more than Overeem.
All in all, it was a pretty unimpressive showing from both fighters.
‘Reem managed to live up to his hype, to an extent. He did defeat a top ten fighter, but the victory was lackluster. So, does this mean that Alistair is ready for the UFC’s elite?
Definitely not.
Overeem has very impressive striking offense, but if he wants to get by in the UFC he is going to need to work on his striking defense. Fabricio was able to tag him consistently throughout the fight by just charging forward and throwing fairly sloppy punches.
It’s common knowledge that Alistair doesn’t have the best chin; more than half of his career defeats have come by knockout. He may have gotten away with eating some of Fabricio’s punches, but Fabricio doesn’t have particularly heavy hands. If Overeem were to eat those same punches from a guy like Junior dos Santos, or Shane Carwin, he would likely be in big trouble.
Something a lot of people forget when speculating on Alistair’s potential success in the UFC is that he has never fought an elite wrestler. His takedown defense was good against Werdum, but Werdum does not have explosive takedowns. Given his inexperience with high level wrestlers, I think ‘Reem would have a hard time staying on his feet against guys like Cain Velasquez, Brock Lesnar and Shane Carwin.
Overeem is coming along nicely as a heavyweight, that’s for sure, but look at his victory of Werdum and then look at Junior dos Santos’ victory over Werdum. That should give you an idea of where Alistair’s game is at.
Alistair is an excellent fighter, but I don’t think he is ready for the best the UFC’s heavyweight division has to offer. Not yet, at least.
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