Alistair Overeem has been forced to withdraw from his scheduled August 15 Strikeforce heavyweight title fight against Fabricio Werdum. Strikeforce director of communications Mike Afromowitz confirmed the news with FanHouse on Tuesday. Afromowitz said that the reason for the withdrawal was that the hand infection Overeem suffered following his May altercation in an Amsterdam nightclub has not fully healed.Afromowitz added that Fabricio Werdum is still scheduled to compete on the card, but no opponent has officially been signed.
One would think that Brett Rogers' name would be on the short list of replacements, but Rogers' manager, Mike Reilly, told FanHouse that the organization has not contacted him about replacing Overeem. He also added that, "We wouldn't be interested in taking another short notice fight. We want to fight in October."
The organization has yet to decide whether they will introduce an interim title while Overeem recovers.
MMA Weekly first the reported the news that Overeem was still having issues with his injured hand.
Overeem is currently riding a four-fight winning streak, with one no contest against Mirko Cro Cop at DREAM.6. He defeated Paul Buentello in November 2007 to win the Strikeforce belt, but has yet to defend it once. He was also supposed to fight on Strikeforce's June 6 card but the same hand injury sustained just weeks before the event kept him out of action.
Strikeforce's next event, headlined by Gina Carano vs. Cristiane "Cyborg" Santos for the new Strikeforce 145-pound women's title, will take place at the HP Pavilion in San Jose. Also scheduled is a lightweight title fight between champion Josh Thomson and Gilbert Melendez and a welterweight title fight between Nick Diaz and Joe Riggs. The event airs live on Showtime.
Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Christ, is Overeem being paid off by the Lesnar camp? I swear, if Overeem isn't c**k-blocking Rogers first by ducking him and then by ducking Werdum on top of it... And if Rogers has no chance to work his way through the Strikeforce list, how the hell, undefeated or not, is he going to ever have a chance to be taken seriously by the UFC? This smells to me.
The only thing that smells is your post.
Strip him from his belt, he hasn't defended it once, and he's always full of ways to get out of fights...he sucks anyway...
He hasn't defended it once because after he won the belt Strikeforce had no one for him to fight thats why he went to Japan and now they've a couple other heavyweights he could fight and so happens he's injured.
Do a little research next time instead of just commenting for the hell of it.
@RJ When you correcting someone you should be sure you know what you are talking about. As you said, do some research. That isn't why he didn't defend the belt.
RJ, I know the sense of distinguishing rotten smells from normal smells would be inverted for someone who's spent so much time obviously living in Brock Lesnar's rectum--and to be fair, for someone his size it must pretty roomy. But still...
hsiunnu, you sound like a moron.
yeah, i'm sure that's what lesner's camp is doing paying people off so as not to fight the other guy. brilliant!
rj i love your comments.