During today’s UFC 141 conference call, Alistair Overeem was asked to address the steroid allegations that have plagued him for most of his career and have intensified since his latest incident with NSAC, in which the former Strikeforce heavyweight champion failed to submit to a pre-fight drug testing when requested by the Nevada commission. His answer to the question was basically the same reason why he turned in his urine and blood samples more than two weeks late for his upcoming December 30 bout with Brock Lesnar: he’s simply too busy to deal with them.
“Everybody has a right to ask whatever they want and I have a right to respond or to ignore. The thing is, I’m very busy with my career — it’s not only just training, it’s a lot of other stuff on top of it, which is assembling the team, PR, doing all these interviews — so I’m very occupied with that,” Overeem explained matter-of-factly. “I simply don’t have the time to get into all these allegations. Usually they’re done over [the] Internet, [by] people I don’t even know and have never even met.”
(“So do they make horse jerky, too?”)
During today’s UFC 141 conference call, Alistair Overeem was asked to address the steroid allegations that have plagued him for most of his career and have intensified since his latest incident with NSAC, in which the former Strikeforce heavyweight champion failed to submit to a pre-fight drug testing when requested by the Nevada commission. His answer to the question was basically the same reason why he turned in his urine and blood samples more than two weeks late for his upcoming December 30 bout with Brock Lesnar: he’s simply too busy to deal with them.
“Everybody has a right to ask whatever they want and I have a right to respond or to ignore. The thing is, I’m very busy with my career — it’s not only just training, it’s a lot of other stuff on top of it, which is assembling the team, PR, doing all these interviews — so I’m very occupied with that,” Overeem explained matter-of-factly. “I simply don’t have the time to get into all these allegations. Usually they’re done over [the] Internet, [by] people I don’t even know and have never even met.”
“I’ve been dealing with the same accusations my whole life. Being part of the spotlight and being I guess with the Internet and everything these days – and being social media and everybody knows everything – it’s part of the lifestyle,” Lesnar explained. “It comes with the territory. I’ve been used to it for many years now.”
When former UFC Heavyweight Champion Brock Lesnar steps into the octagon against former Strikeforce Heavyweight Champion Alistair Overeem on December 30, in the Main Event of UFC 141. It will have been 433 days since Lesnar’s last fight. A T…
When former UFC Heavyweight Champion Brock Lesnar steps into the octagon against former Strikeforce Heavyweight Champion Alistair Overeem on December 30, in the Main Event of UFC 141. It will have been 433 days since Lesnar’s last fight.
A TKO loss to Cain Velasquez at UFC 121 back in October of 2010, where Lesnar lost the UFC Heavyweight title.
Much has happened in the heavyweight division since Lesnar’s last fight.
Junior Dos Santos has won the UFC Heavyweight title, with a TKO against Cain Velasquez at UFC on Fox 1 to win the championship.
Frank Mir has won two fights in a row, giving him three in a row overall. He put himself right back in position for another title shot.
Cheick Kongo has won two fights in a row and has entered a short list of top contenders.
Mark Hunt, Stefan Struve, Brendan Schaub, and Dave Herman have all picked up impressive wins inside the octagon.
So where does all of this leave Lesnar?
A win against Overeem puts Lesnar in a title fight with Dos Santos some time in the Summer of 2012, when Dos Santos returns from his meniscus injury.
But a loss would mean a big setback for his career.
After two bouts with diverticulitis, Lesnar’s career has turned into somewhat of a race against the clock. That may be the case for his life as well.
Against someone like Overeem, who has 15 KO/TKO wins in his career, he will be looking to attack Lesnar’s mid-section, the location of his diverticulitis.
Lesnar has two things going for him right now:
1. After Dos Santos, Mir, Velasquez, and Overeem, there are no heavyweights worthy of being included in a “Tier 1” category. There is a horrible lack of top contenders in that division right now.
A fight between Kongo and Browne would be interesting to see who truly belongs in the elite class, but that fight is a long way from even being proposed. Let alone happening.
2. Lesnar is one of the biggest draws, if not the biggest draw in the UFC today or ever. Joe Silva will always be looking to put him in big fights to rack in big Pay-Per-View numbers.
Lesnar has appeared in the Main Event in four of the top six PPV’s in UFC history, including the top two.
A loss in a week and a half would, for the time being, knock Lesnar out of the top tier. It would make him an attractive opponent for Shane Carwin when he returns from surgery in mid-2012. It would be a rematch of their heavyweight title match from July of 2010.
For Lesnar, 25 minutes on Saturday may very well decide the rest of his life.
A crazy year is about to conclude for Alistair Overeem, fresh face to the UFC and the man who will oppose Brock Lesnar in the main event of UFC 141. The former DREAM, K-1 and Strikeforce champion will make his UFC debut against a former champion. Many …
A crazy year is about to conclude for Alistair Overeem, fresh face to the UFC and the man who will oppose Brock Lesnar in the main event of UFC 141. The former DREAM, K-1 and Strikeforce champion will make his UFC debut against a former champion. Many believe Overeem has something to prove after a harrowing year of his own.
2011 was eventful for Overeem for a number of reasons. After winning the K-1 Grand Prix and DREAM heavyweight titles only a few weeks apart in December 2010, Overeem ended up not being paid by K-1 before DREAM fell into financial ruin itself.
Shortly thereafter, Strikeforce was sold to Zuffa. While participating in the Strikeforce Heavyweight Grand Prix, Overeem was released seemingly out of the blue. He ended up on the outs with his management, dropped them, got re-signed by Zuffa to a UFC contract and agreed to fight Lesnar instead of waiting for a guaranteed title shot.
After accepting the Lesnar fight, Overeem found himself in the midst of a legal battle with his former managers, and also got word that his mother was sick back in Europe. Having just changed camps and moving from Holland to Las Vegas, he had to return home to tend to her—just in time to miss a drug test and subsequently almost go unlicensed for the fight.
To say the least, it’s been quite a run for the man they call “The Reem.”
“It’s been a rollercoaster ride,” Overeem said during a media call that Bleacher Report MMA sat in on. “It started maybe a year-and-a-half ago, after the Brett Rogers fight. I was in Japan to do media, it was a crazy time. Every day doing television shows, all the media attention,” recalls Overeem.
“Come back for the Strikeforce GP, injury before [fighting Fabricio] Werdum, after, then back and to the UFC. I can only thank my team, they’ve been a rock. They’ve taken away all the headaches, my thanks and gratitude goes out to them.”
For all the hurdles, and all he’s thankful for, Overeem says he’s more focused than ever and is ready for the biggest stage in MMA.
“The UFC is huge, but the thing for me is that the bigger the fight is and the more people that come to watch, the better I perform. I’m feeling good mentally and physically, I’m sharp. I’m sparring with wrestling guys, I’m ready.”
In Lesnar, he’ll face a man who can match him physically, but is grossly different stylistically. While Overeem will look to win exchanges standing, Lesnar is likely to utilize his superior wrestling to be successful. It could be as simple as who gets the fight where they want it to be first. Overeem says he’s ready for a fight that will go anywhere.
“People tend to look at the last couple of years—even then I had a couple of submissions—but I’m an all-around fighter. My striking got better because of K-1, and I prefer a knockout over a submission. I can’t talk about [my training], but I’m a well-rounded fighter.”
Regardless of where the fight ends up, its Overeem’s focus to become the UFC heavyweight champion and capture a centrepiece for a mantle that’s already quite full.
“The UFC title is missing from my collection. That title is missing. That’s the only thing that’s left to achieve.”
He’ll get the chance to move towards filling that void on December 30.
Matthew Ryder is a Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes were obtained first-hand from a UFC 141 media call.
For both participants in the UFC 141 main event, life outside the cage has been even more hectic than the limited time spent inside it of late. Maybe that’s why neither is terribly thrilled about the prospect of talking about it at length.
With former UFC heavyweight champ Brock Lesnar getting back into action for the first time since having twelve inches of his colon removed, and Alistair Overeem in the midst of a battle with the Nevada State Athletic Commission over licensing issues — all while also trying to see to his ailing mother back home in the Netherlands — the year-end pay-per-view could have easily been dubbed UFC 141: Outside Distractions.
But with the two men set to square off in Las Vegas on December 30, at least they can relate to one another’s struggles on some level. Take, for instance, Lesnar’s response to Overeem’s drug-testing woes on Monday’s UFC 141 media call.
Though the former champion said he’s remained blissfully ignorant of most of Overeem’s issues with the NSAC, thanks in part to his isolated training camp and general disdain of the internet, Lesnar said he knows what it’s like to have people peppering him with questions about drug tests and suspicious muscle mass.
“I’ve been dealing with the same accusations my whole life,” Lesnar said, calling it “part of the lifestyle…I’ve been used to it for many years now.”
Overeem, too, seems to have become numb to the questions and whispers about his weight gain and almost cartoonish physique, even if he’s known to be a little more congenial about those questions than Lesnar.
“Everybody has a right to ask whatever they want, and I have a right to respond or to ignore,” said Overeem. “The thing is, I’m very busy with my career. It’s not only just training, it’s a lot of other stuff on top of it, which is assembling the team, PR, doing all these interviews, so I’m very occupied with that. I simply don’t have the time to get into all these allegations. Usually they’re done over [the] internet, people I don’t even know and have never even met.”
Both men also seem to have to their own unique no-go lists when it comes to pre-fight questions from media. For Lesnar, it’s the repetitive questions about his health, his surgery, and his comeback from diverticulitis that he only has so much patience for these days. He played along for a little while on Monday’s call, admitting that there was “nothing easy” about his recent struggles, but when asked to expand on those issues he quickly found his breaking point.
“I’ve answered a million questions about my health here,” he snapped at one reporter. “That’s the best you can come up with today? I feel great. I feel very, very good.”
Overeem, on the other hand, continued to guard any and all information about his life inside the gym as if it were a matter of national security. The Dutch heavyweight instantly shut down any question about who he was training with or how he’d adjusted to moving his camp from Vegas to Holland in order to be closer to his mother, who is still recovering from cancer treatments.
It got to the point where UFC PR man Dave Sholler essentially asked reporters to stop wasting their own time by asking Lesnar about his health or Overeem about his preparation. Too bad those still seem like the most interesting topics less than two weeks out from the fight.
But if you’re keeping score of outside distractions in the lead-up to this bout, it would seem to be Overeem who’s far ahead. Lesnar’s health issues might be more serious than some wrangling with the NSAC, but he’s also had more time to deal with them. Overeem’s had to move his training camp, deal with the emotional drain of a sick mother, and jump from one doctor’s office to the next just to get the commission a drug test that it will accept.
Through it all he’s kept a remarkably calm public appearance, maybe because he’s used to the chaos after such a tumultuous career in both Japan and North America.
“I’ve been through a lot in my career,” he said. “I have like, I don’t know, I think like 65 or 70 fights, so you learn how to deal with distractions, setbacks. I mean, I’m a three-time champion, and I’ve been through a lot. It’s all about adaptation. I’m pretty good at that, I think.”
Lesnar also touched on the challenge of “trying to live a somewhat normal life” while also competing as a world-famous UFC heavyweight, but in the end there might be only one thing they agree on, and it’s that neither is expecting to have to put in 25 minutes of work on fight night.
“I don’t see it really going past the second round,” said Overeem. “First or second round, maximum.”
Lesnar concurred, saying, “I feel the same. This is a heavyweight fight that, you know, we’re both going in to finish this fight. I don’t foresee it going five rounds.”
Whether that’s more of a prediction or a hope, we’ll have to wait and see.
For both participants in the UFC 141 main event, life outside the cage has been even more hectic than the limited time spent inside it of late. Maybe that’s why neither is terribly thrilled about the prospect of talking about it at length.
With former UFC heavyweight champ Brock Lesnar getting back into action for the first time since having twelve inches of his colon removed, and Alistair Overeem in the midst of a battle with the Nevada State Athletic Commission over licensing issues — all while also trying to see to his ailing mother back home in the Netherlands — the year-end pay-per-view could have easily been dubbed UFC 141: Outside Distractions.
But with the two men set to square off in Las Vegas on December 30, at least they can relate to one another’s struggles on some level. Take, for instance, Lesnar’s response to Overeem’s drug-testing woes on Monday’s UFC 141 media call.
Though the former champion said he’s remained blissfully ignorant of most of Overeem’s issues with the NSAC, thanks in part to his isolated training camp and general disdain of the internet, Lesnar said he knows what it’s like to have people peppering him with questions about drug tests and suspicious muscle mass.
“I’ve been dealing with the same accusations my whole life,” Lesnar said, calling it “part of the lifestyle…I’ve been used to it for many years now.”
Overeem, too, seems to have become numb to the questions and whispers about his weight gain and almost cartoonish physique, even if he’s known to be a little more congenial about those questions than Lesnar.
“Everybody has a right to ask whatever they want, and I have a right to respond or to ignore,” said Overeem. “The thing is, I’m very busy with my career. It’s not only just training, it’s a lot of other stuff on top of it, which is assembling the team, PR, doing all these interviews, so I’m very occupied with that. I simply don’t have the time to get into all these allegations. Usually they’re done over [the] internet, people I don’t even know and have never even met.”
Both men also seem to have to their own unique no-go lists when it comes to pre-fight questions from media. For Lesnar, it’s the repetitive questions about his health, his surgery, and his comeback from diverticulitis that he only has so much patience for these days. He played along for a little while on Monday’s call, admitting that there was “nothing easy” about his recent struggles, but when asked to expand on those issues he quickly found his breaking point.
“I’ve answered a million questions about my health here,” he snapped at one reporter. “That’s the best you can come up with today? I feel great. I feel very, very good.”
Overeem, on the other hand, continued to guard any and all information about his life inside the gym as if it were a matter of national security. The Dutch heavyweight instantly shut down any question about who he was training with or how he’d adjusted to moving his camp from Vegas to Holland in order to be closer to his mother, who is still recovering from cancer treatments.
It got to the point where UFC PR man Dave Sholler essentially asked reporters to stop wasting their own time by asking Lesnar about his health or Overeem about his preparation. Too bad those still seem like the most interesting topics less than two weeks out from the fight.
But if you’re keeping score of outside distractions in the lead-up to this bout, it would seem to be Overeem who’s far ahead. Lesnar’s health issues might be more serious than some wrangling with the NSAC, but he’s also had more time to deal with them. Overeem’s had to move his training camp, deal with the emotional drain of a sick mother, and jump from one doctor’s office to the next just to get the commission a drug test that it will accept.
Through it all he’s kept a remarkably calm public appearance, maybe because he’s used to the chaos after such a tumultuous career in both Japan and North America.
“I’ve been through a lot in my career,” he said. “I have like, I don’t know, I think like 65 or 70 fights, so you learn how to deal with distractions, setbacks. I mean, I’m a three-time champion, and I’ve been through a lot. It’s all about adaptation. I’m pretty good at that, I think.”
Lesnar also touched on the challenge of “trying to live a somewhat normal life” while also competing as a world-famous UFC heavyweight, but in the end there might be only one thing they agree on, and it’s that neither is expecting to have to put in 25 minutes of work on fight night.
“I don’t see it really going past the second round,” said Overeem. “First or second round, maximum.”
Lesnar concurred, saying, “I feel the same. This is a heavyweight fight that, you know, we’re both going in to finish this fight. I don’t foresee it going five rounds.”
Whether that’s more of a prediction or a hope, we’ll have to wait and see.
With less than two months to go before his UFC debut, all hell seemed to break loose for Alistair Overeem. He parted ways with his longtime Golden Glory team, a split which led to a lawsuit. His mother was diagnosed with a recurrence of cancer. And most recently, he faced the possibility that his UFC 141 fight with Brock Lesnar might not even happen after drug testing difficulties threatened him from receiving a fighter’s license in Nevada.
With time running low, Overeem still hasn’t received notification of his license, but he still expects to fight. Regardless of all the troubles, Overeem says he has not wavered from task of beating Lesnar.
“My mental focus is entirely there,” he said on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour. “Of course, you have to do this and do that, but I get over it fairly quick because I see it as my work. I’m 100 percent there, I’m 100 percent motivated. I know I’m going to beat him. I know it’s my time.”
Overeem is still in Holland and said he would spend Christmas with his mother before traveling to Nevada for the fight.
Overeem wouldn’t place the blame for the drug test mixup on anyone, saying it was a combination of factors including his unfamiliarity with dealing with U.S. state athletic commissions that led to the problem.
As a result of the issue, Overeem will be subject to a series of tests over the next few months. He had to take a test just a few days ago, will have another pre-fight test on the day of weigh-ins, and then be subject to two random screenings within the next six months.
Instead of looking it as an imposition on him, Overeem sees it as a way to convince the skeptics that he’s clean.
“The good thing is, and I tend to view it through the good lens, it can work in my favor because you’re going to take away the critic’s arguments,” he said. “I’m going to be the most tested fighter in MMA history.”
He also faced the issue of attempting to build a camp in short order. He started off in Las Vegas with Xtreme Couture, but when he returned home to care for his mother, he had to pull in his own team with which to prepare.
He said that wasn’t an issue as he had been actively working to build a wider network of workout partners within the last few years, and made calls to some of those acquaintances to help out. Though he declined to provide details, he did acknowledge that he brought in wrestlers specifically to prepare for Lesnar’s strength.
As the rocky road to UFC 141 finally nears its end, Overeem affirms that the past history won’t effect him when it matters the most.
“Despite all distraction I’m good,” he said. “I feel good. I put the work in since August already. My conditioning is good. My preparation has been a little bit rocky with all the distractions coming down, but mentally and physically I’m 110 percent here.”
With less than two months to go before his UFC debut, all hell seemed to break loose for Alistair Overeem. He parted ways with his longtime Golden Glory team, a split which led to a lawsuit. His mother was diagnosed with a recurrence of cancer. And most recently, he faced the possibility that his UFC 141 fight with Brock Lesnar might not even happen after drug testing difficulties threatened him from receiving a fighter’s license in Nevada.
With time running low, Overeem still hasn’t received notification of his license, but he still expects to fight. Regardless of all the troubles, Overeem says he has not wavered from task of beating Lesnar.
“My mental focus is entirely there,” he said on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour. “Of course, you have to do this and do that, but I get over it fairly quick because I see it as my work. I’m 100 percent there, I’m 100 percent motivated. I know I’m going to beat him. I know it’s my time.”
Overeem is still in Holland and said he would spend Christmas with his mother before traveling to Nevada for the fight.
Overeem wouldn’t place the blame for the drug test mixup on anyone, saying it was a combination of factors including his unfamiliarity with dealing with U.S. state athletic commissions that led to the problem.
As a result of the issue, Overeem will be subject to a series of tests over the next few months. He had to take a test just a few days ago, will have another pre-fight test on the day of weigh-ins, and then be subject to two random screenings within the next six months.
Instead of looking it as an imposition on him, Overeem sees it as a way to convince the skeptics that he’s clean.
“The good thing is, and I tend to view it through the good lens, it can work in my favor because you’re going to take away the critic’s arguments,” he said. “I’m going to be the most tested fighter in MMA history.”
He also faced the issue of attempting to build a camp in short order. He started off in Las Vegas with Xtreme Couture, but when he returned home to care for his mother, he had to pull in his own team with which to prepare.
He said that wasn’t an issue as he had been actively working to build a wider network of workout partners within the last few years, and made calls to some of those acquaintances to help out. Though he declined to provide details, he did acknowledge that he brought in wrestlers specifically to prepare for Lesnar’s strength.
As the rocky road to UFC 141 finally nears its end, Overeem affirms that the past history won’t effect him when it matters the most.
“Despite all distraction I’m good,” he said. “I feel good. I put the work in since August already. My conditioning is good. My preparation has been a little bit rocky with all the distractions coming down, but mentally and physically I’m 110 percent here.”
According to fighters.com, former Strikeforce heavyweight champion and new UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) employee Alistair Overeem is taking his recent drug testing mix-up all in his stride.
“I always try—and sometimes you can’…
According to fighters.com, former Strikeforce heavyweight champion and new UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) employee Alistair Overeem is taking his recent drug testing mix-up all in his stride.
“I always try—and sometimes you can’t—but 99 percent of the time I manage to mentally turn things around to a positive,” Overeem recently wrote on his Yahoo Sports. “And on the positive side of all of this, I now know that if I train in Holland for a UFC fight again, I will need to go to England to do a test because the medical rules in Holland are too different to those in Nevada. It also helps me make my mind up to train in the US for my next UFC fight as long as I don’t have the same family issues to consider like I do right now.”
“Another positive is that I’m now the most tested fighter in the sport,” he continued. “I will be tested four times in three weeks, and then at least twice more in the next six months in addition to any testing for my next fight.”
This was with regards to “The Demolition Man’s” failure to supply a urine sample to the NSAC (Nevada Athletic State Commission) ahead of his Dec 30th clash with Brock Lesnar at UFC 141.
The confusion arose due to an supposed miscommunication between the NSAC and Overeem—the latter stating that he had no prior knowledge of the obligatory prerequisites (urine samples) before heading back to Holland to finish up his training camp and take care of his sick mother.
He did, however, submit a blood sample which came back negative, but at the same time, it failed to meet the NSAC’s requisite of a urine sample.
Apropos the frequent drug testing undergone by the Dutch mixed martial artist—he perceives it as a means of proving to his naysayers that his massive bulk is down to hard work in the gym rather than the use of AAS (anabolic-androgen steroids).
“I have had people—I will politely call them ‘haters’—accuse me of taking steroids since I was a 185-pound kickboxer at the age of 17,” Overeem began. “When I was 20, I’ve fought at a weight of 222 lbs. I am now aged 31 and weigh 35 lbs more. I don’t think 35 lbs is too much to grow in 11 years from a 20-year-old to 31-year-old.”
“Facts are, I have been tested with the commission numerous times before when I fought in the U.S. and got tested in Japan. I always passed any testing, so hopefully now with these next tests coming and the fact of me being the most tested fighter in the sport, the critics may be satisfied. And if not, well, that’s not my problem, that is their problem.”
At present, the former K-1 and Dream heavyweight champion is awaiting the results of the urine tests that the commission had initially required, and thus, has been granted conditional license by the NSAC after missing the drug testing deadline.
With that said, it means the UFC 141 main event can go ahead as planned.
When former UFC Heavyweight Champion 
For both participants in the 
With less than two months to go before his