The moment many had been waiting for finally came to fruition this past Saturday night in Dallas, Texas as the second leg of the Strikeforce Heavyweight Tournament quarterfinal played out in front of a crowd of over 7,000 fans at the American Airlines Center.
The Strikeforce heavyweight champion Alistair Overeem was making his third appearance in four years in a non-title fight to move on to the semifinals of the tournament against Antonio Silva.
Most importantly, fans were finally going to see Overeem take on a legitimate top-10 heavyweight in mixed martial arts, Fabricio Werdum.
Overeem came out the victor with a unanimous decision over Werdum, but he certainly did not do much to impress his detractors.
Werdum, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt know for a slick ground game pathetically tried to get Overeem to the ground for all 15 minutes and quite possibly handed the Dutchman the victory by pulling guard at every chance he had.
Despite Overeem being able to rag doll and shrug off Werdum when ever he tried to get the fight to the ground, Overeem who is supposed to be the best heavyweight striker in mixed martial arts looked average in the stand up to say the least.
Junior dos Santos knocked out Werdum in one round, Overeem, the current K1 kickboxing champion never really had Werdum in any danger.
Werdum outpointed Overeem in the standup and if he hadn’t have tried to pull guard or shoot for takedowns so often who knows what would have happened. It was very surprising to see Werdum land so much out of the clinch, something Overeem has become famous for himself.
Luckily for Overeem, his opponent’s poor game plan played to his favor in the judges’ score cards and he was able to get himself in to the semifinal slot against Antonio Silva.
Of course, Overeem did land some power shots that dropped Werdum a couple of times, but he never followed them up and he was headhunting as opposed to stringing together combinations to set something up.
Even more disappointing was the complete lack of conditioning shown by both athletes last night. Early on in Round 2 of the three-round affair, both men were gasping for air. Even by the time the post-fight interview came around with Gus Johnson, Overeem was still fighting to catch his breath.
Despite the weak performance last night, there are a few things to be considered.
This fight was a rematch for Overeem and he was fighting to avenge a loss. The last time the two fought, Werdum submitted him via kimura back in 2006. Overeem was obviously wary of the Brazilian’s ground game this time around and worrying about the takedown may have affected his aggressiveness in the standup.
Nerves may have crept into Overeem’s mind just before the fight and an adrenaline dump may have affected his cardio.
It was arguably his first heavyweight fight against a top-10 opponent, it was a revenge match and the expectations were set high. These are hard mental hurdles for anyone to overcome and considering Overeem’s history during his light heavyweight days where he wilted and lost on many occasions as soon as the level of competition was raised, it is no surprise that he struggled a bit tonight.
He is the K1 heavyweight champion, he has won title fights and he has been fighting for more than a decade, so one would hope that he learned how to manage the mental game, but you never know.
After the performance last night by Overeem, one has to assume he is coming in as the underdog for his next fight against Antonio Silva. Unlike Overeem last night, Silva put an absolute clinic and earned a second-round stoppage against arguably the best heavyweight in the world in Fedor Emelianenko.
Overeem certainly won’t have a size advantage over Silva who is rumored to weigh close to 290 pounds on fight night and it seems as if Silva may have the larger gas tank as well.
Poor performance aside, Overeem still won the fight and let’s be honest, any heavyweight who can throw around Werdum the way Overeem did has some serious power and explosiveness.
He obviously has to go back to the drawing board, but he still has the championship belt. Even the best fighters in the world can have bad performances and still be the best, check out Georges St-Pierre’s performance against Jake Shields or Anderson Silva‘s performances against Demian Maia and Thales Leites.
Overeem still is the best heavyweight on the Strikeforce roster, he just needs to come out and redeem himself in his next fight.
One thing that appears to be prevalent with Overeem and Golden Glory fighters is there seems to be a conditioning issue. It was just last week that John-Olav Einemo made his UFC debut where he lost in the second round after running out of gas and finally succumbing to the knees and punches of Dave Herman despite landing some heavy strikes of his own.
The Golden Glory fighters usually try to come out strong and go for broke in the early going, but if their opponents can make it through that first flurry the opponents’ chances of winning increase exponentially.
Let’s forget about the best heavyweight in Strikeforce for a second and flip our attention to the UFC heavyweight division. Whether Overeem or another Strikeforce heavyweight is the best in the promotion, how do they stack up to the UFC’s best?
Tonight’s main event seemed very telling of the fact that the current UFC heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez and the top contenders: Junior dos Santos, Shane Carwin, Brock Lesnar and possibly Frank Mir appear to be a cut above the guys fighting in Strikeforce.
The top five guys in the UFC can go more than a round without gassing and the guys in Strikeforce are going to have to get to work if there is any talk of a title unification bout between the champions of each promotion at some point.
Leon Horne has been contributing to Bleacher Report for three years now. He focuses mainly on mixed martial arts, but he has also written about tennis, football and hockey. Just send him a message if you want to talk sports or discuss any opportunities. You can follow him on Twitter for updates: 
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