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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
With Fabricio Werdum on the sidelines due to elbow surgery and Alistair Overeem currently taking part in the K-1 World Grand Prix, Strikeforce will be without a Heavyweight Championship fight until 2011. With Werdum's injury keeping him out until the spring, the organization conceivably could have attempted to set up a different fight for Overeem, but it appears the Champ himself isn't looking to return to MMA that early either.
In an interview with PunchDrunkGamer.com, Overeem stated that he plans to take some time off after December's K-1 tournament, and revealed when he'll be ready to return to Strikeforce.
"After my K-1 adventure, I will take a deserved holiday and then hope to be in the cage around May in Strikeforce," he said.
That sets up the logical fight between him and Werdum, and that's the one that Overeem wants to take.
"I've stated many times that I [wanted to] fight the winner of the match [between] Werdum vs. Fedor," Overeem said when asked who he wanted to fight next in MMA. "So my answer is Werdum, this doesn't mean that I don't want to fight Fedor but we have to stick to logical thinking and Werdum deserves the title contender position. If a fight with Werdum is not possible then Fedor is a good opponent. You know what though? I don't really care whom I will be fighting."
A May return will have kept Overeem out of the Strikeforce cage for a year, but that's still much sooner than the last layoff he had in the organization.
Penick's Analysis: Timing-wise it will work to get the Overeem-Werdum fight together, but it will still be unfortunate that he'll have been away from MMA for another full year. That leaves Fedor with Josh Barnett as the only new option outside of rematches against Brett Rogers or Andrei Arlovski. We'll see if Strikeforce can put any of those fights together sometime in early 2011, or if Fedor will continue to try to hold out for either Werdum or Overeem.
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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