[div class=”notice” class2=”icon”]The following is from an article on LiverKick.com, part of the MiddleEasy Network.[/div]
Tonight in the main event of Strikeforce’s show in Dallas, Alistair Overeem won a decision over Fabricio Werdum. The fight didn’t go as anyone predicted it. It was drawn out over 3 rounds, with Overeem constantly stuffing Werdum’s takedowns, spending little portions of time on the ground and battling it out on the feet. The thing that surprised many was that Werdum actually outlanded Overeem on the feet. I’m going to get into every aspect of this fight, the future and the backlash of the fight community.
Now you may notice that Werdum outlanded Overeem in the stand up. A lot of people who don’t understand what’s going on are jumping on this fact. People don’t realize how much the threat of a takedown plays into the striking. Many are even going as far to discredit the whole sport of kickboxing just because Werdum outlanded Overeem. Go watch the fight and you can see Overeem is solely focusing on defending the takedown from Werdum. Overeem respected the ground game of Werdum so much that he didn’t showcase a lot of his striking ability in fear of getting put on his back, where Werdum has the advantage. Now this can be seen as a flaw in itself and I acknowledge that Overeem needs some more time to readjust to MMA. Overeem’s stints in K-1 have clearly pushed back his overall MMA mentality and he’ll have to work on it.