Strikeforce
STRIKEFORCE NEWS: Alistair Overeem says he'll return to Strikeforce no earlier than April 2011
Nov 15, 2010 - 11:50:17 PM STRIKEFORCE NEWS: Alistair Overeem says he'll return to Strikeforce no earlier than April 2011

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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

The Strikeforce heavyweight division continues to sit in limbo, with most of the main players at the top of the division sitting out of action into 2011. Outside of Antonio "Bigfoot" Silva's bout with Valentijn Overeem on December 4, none of the other heavyweights are currently scheduled to fight.

Fabricio Werdum told Sherdog.com that Strikeforce wants him in a fight in March, but he's looking to fight in Abu Dhabi or Japan in February. Now, Heavyweight Champion Alistair Overeem tells MMAFighting.com that he won't be returning to the organization until even later.

"I will be ready for Strikeforce as soon as I would say April, May, June," Overeem said.

Overeem is competing in K-1's Heavyweight Grand Prix in 2010, and although there was some jockeying back and forth between Overeem and Fedor Emelianenko and M-1 Global, Overeem says he had made his decision to compete in K-1 because they wouldn't agree to face him.

"I decided halfway August that I was going to compete in K-1, because they didn't want to fight me," he said.

With being in action in December, and possibly looking to fight on the New Year's Eve Dynamite!!!! card from DREAM's parent company FEG, Overeem said he'd need time to prepare to defend his title, but did say he'd prefer to face Werdum when he returns.

"You want to win the fight, you want to kill the guy," Overeem said. "You're not going to take a title defense fight -- which is five times five minutes -- you need to build your conditioning. If I'm going to fight Werdum, if I'm going to fight Fedor, I want to destroy them.

"Personally, I think Werdum. Yep, Werdum, cause that makes sense. I already fought Brett [Rogers] coming out of a loss to Fedor. People gave me a lot of [expletive] for that. 'Yeah, you're a fighting a guy who lost, this and that.' I'm not interested in doing that anymore. Let's stick to some sort of ranking and that rankings tell me Werdum beat Fedor. Now, in my opinion, Werdum is No. 2 and Fedor is No. 3, I would say [Antonio "Bigfoot"] Silva is No. 4."

Link to Original Source Article

Penick's Analysis: We'll likely wind up seeing Overeem-Werdum still, because if Werdum takes a fight in February, he'd likely be able to return by April or May himself, barring injury. That still leaves a Fedor-Josh Barnett fight on the dockett as well. At this point, while Strikeforce has some good heavyweights on the roster, until they get them fighting one another they've got nothing.