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Overeem’s Belt Not On the Line in Strikeforce Heavyweight World Grand Prix Tournament

Strikeforce President, Scott Coker announced today that Alistair Overeem’s Heavyweight Title is not on the line during the eight-man Strikeforce Heavyweight World Grand Prix Tournament. Instead, there will be a separate Strikeforce Heavyweight Champion and Tournament Champion. The winner of the tournament will then go on to fight Overeem for the Strikeforce Heavyweight belt, unless the […]

Strikeforce President, Scott Coker announced today that Alistair Overeem’s Heavyweight Title is not on the line during the eight-man Strikeforce Heavyweight World Grand Prix Tournament. Instead, there will be a separate Strikeforce Heavyweight Champion and Tournament Champion. The winner of the tournament will then go on to fight Overeem for the Strikeforce Heavyweight belt, unless the winner of the tournament is Overeem. In such case, Coker says:

“If Overeem wins, he’s not just the best MMA or K-1 fighter, he can say he’s the greatest martial arts fighter in the world,”

That is, in a world without Georges St. Pierre, Cain Velasquez, Anderson Silva…

2011: Year of the Heavyweight

Filed under: UFC, StrikeforceIf 2011 goes as planned, we’ll see more good, competitive, high-level mixed martial arts fights than we’ve ever seen in any year of the sport’s existence.

Strikeforce’s eight-man heavyweight tournament was getting all the …

Filed under: UFC, Strikeforce

If 2011 goes as planned, we’ll see more good, competitive, high-level mixed martial arts fights than we’ve ever seen in any year of the sport’s existence.

Strikeforce’s eight-man heavyweight tournament was getting all the headlines last week, but the UFC did a nice job of bouncing back with the news that Brock Lesnar and Junior dos Santos will coach the upcoming season of The Ultimate Fighter, that Shane Carwin expects to return in June, and that Frank Mir vs. Roy Nelson and Stefan Struve vs. Travis Browne are slated for May.

Assuming a best-case scenario for both promotions, we’ll have good heavyweight fights from Strikeforce, the UFC or both every month for the next 10 months or so, culminating with the return of Cain Velasquez and the Strikeforce tournament final toward the end of the year. Remember, I started this with an “If”: Looking ahead to fights that we hope to see in the future is always risky business. But below we’ll look at the fights that will make this the year of the heavyweight.

Scott Coker Explains Lopsided Nature of Strikeforce Tournament Bracket

(According to a clause in his new contract, Fedor gets to play with half the Batman Legos set now and the other half when he shows up for the semis. PicProps: Showtime)
There’s just something about brackets, man. The human male would probably tun…

(According to a clause in his new contract, Fedor gets to play with half the Batman Legos set now and the other half when he shows up for the semis. PicProps: Showtime)

There’s just something about brackets, man. The human male would probably tune in to a tiddlywinks tournament if it could be neatly arranged in the elegant efficiency of a single elimination bracket. Nothing else allows us to channel our inner fanboy or bring out the modern jackass in our personalities quite like it. Once a year, the mythical lure of the bracket even makes college basketball seem interesting; it’s that powerful. Now, draw up a bracket populated by 265-pound behemoths who are charged with beating the dogshit out of each other until only one is left standing? Well, let’s just say you’ve got our attention.

Suffice it to say that upon poring over the proposed pairings for the 2011 Strikeforce heavyweight grand prix this week, it didn’t take long for the keen bracketologists in the MMA community to notice that the left-hand side of that badboy seemed a bit, um, stacked, while the right side appeared to be Josh Barnett and three other dudes. With Fedor Emelianenko, Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva, Fabricio Werdum and Alistair Overeem all on the same side of the tournament draw, eyebrows were raised in a collective: WTF? Werdum said he thought it was meant to sell pay-per-views. Overeem said he thought it was weird, but wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it. Barnett hasn’t said shit yet, but we assume he’ll take it. Now, the speculation can (sort of) end as company CEO Scott Coker explains to MMA Fighting.com exactly why Strikeforce overstocked one side of the bracket with all its top talent. It turns out not even the promotion itself believed it could engineer the desired Overeem vs. Fedor final, so it fudged things a little bit.

Fabricio Werdum: Last Time I Got Overeem’s Left Arm, This Time the Right

Filed under: Strikeforce, FanHouse ExclusiveThere are two days in Fabricio Werdum’s life that stand out above all others in his mind, the Strikeforce heavyweight told MMA Fighting’s Ariel Helwani on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour. One is the day his …

Filed under: Strikeforce, FanHouse Exclusive

There are two days in Fabricio Werdum‘s life that stand out above all others in his mind, the Strikeforce heavyweight told MMA Fighting’s Ariel Helwani on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour. One is the day his daughter was born. The other? Well, you can probably guess.

June 26, 2010. That was the day Werdum submitted MMA legend Fedor Emelianenko in the first round, handing the Russian his only true loss to date in MMA competition.

Since then, Werdum told Helwani, he’s watched the fight maybe 500 times, picking up on new details with each viewing. And since locking on the submission early in the fight worked so well against Emelianenko, he’s now focused on doing the same thing to Strikeforce heavyweight champ Alistair Overeem in the upcoming Strikeforce heavyweight tournament, and he doesn’t care if the Dutchman knows it or not.

Scott Coker on Strikeforce Tourney: ‘I Would Buy It on Pay-Per-View’

Filed under: Strikeforce, FanHouse ExclusiveIf you think it’s easy to set up an eight-man tournament featuring some of MMA’s most high-profile heavyweight fighters, think again.

Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker explained to MMA Fighting’s Ariel Helwani on …

Filed under: Strikeforce, FanHouse Exclusive

If you think it’s easy to set up an eight-man tournament featuring some of MMA’s most high-profile heavyweight fighters, think again.

Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker explained to MMA Fighting’s Ariel Helwani on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour that simply putting together the tournament was a trial in and of itself, but the labor was made easier by one thing: the fighters’ desire to get in the cage and mix it up.

“You’re dealing with eight managers, from eight different camps, wanting eight different things,” Coker told Helwani. “But in the end, everybody wanted to fight in the tournament, and they said, ‘Sign me up.’ From Fedor [Emelianenko] to Alistair [Overeem] to, you know, Andrei [Arlovski], they all wanted to be in the tournament, because in the old days, let’s say, in Pride, the tournament was very, very popular. I think this is kind of a throwback to that era.”

Fight Video Roundup: All 12 Previous Meetings Between Strikeforce Heavyweight GP Participants [UPDATED]

(Remember when Sergei Kharitonov sent Alistair Overeem’s lifeless body through the ropes at K-1 Hero’s 10? No? Then you really need to watch these videos…)
In our excitement for Strikeforce’s potentially insane heavyweight tournament, one point see…

(Remember when Sergei Kharitonov sent Alistair Overeem‘s lifeless body through the ropes at K-1 Hero’s 10? No? Then you really need to watch these videos…)

In our excitement for Strikeforce’s potentially insane heavyweight tournament, one point seems to be getting lost in the narrative — namely, that these guys have already fought each other many, many times before. Five of the eight competitors (Werdum, Arlovski, Overeem, Emelianenko, Rogers) have previously faced at least three other fighters in the tournament field. Fabricio Werdum has actually fought everyone except Brett Rogers and Josh Barnett, and only Barnett himself has managed to go his entire career without bumping up against anybody else in this year’s bracket.

All told, there’s ~~eleven~~ twelve fights worth of shared history among the Strikeforce HWGP competitors, dating back over five years. To help you study for the quarterfinals next month, we’ve posted them all below in chronological order…

UPDATE: We originally forgot to include Fabricio Werdum’s decision win over Antonio Silva. So actually, there have been 12 previous meetings, not 11. The video has now been added.

(Sergei Kharitonov def. Fabricio Werdum via split decision; PRIDE 30, 10/23/05)

(Alistair Overeem def. Sergei Kharitonov via TKO, 5:13 of round 1; PRIDE 31, 2/26/06)