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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
UFC President Dana White revealed recently that the UFC plans on giving Alistair Overeem an immediate title shot once he's able to get licensed at the end of December. However, that would require him to wait out at least a few months, as he'd take on the winner of the bout between Junior dos Santos and Cain Velasquez at UFC 155.
That's not something Overeem necessarily wants to do, and with the penchant for fighters to get injured, he certainly doesn't want to wait out if the victor of that fight emerges with any injuries. In an interview with MMAWeekly.com, Overeem's manager, Glenn Robinson of Authentic Sports Management, gave an update on where the Dutch heavyweight's thought process is at.
"Right now, he's not even licensed so the UFC's hands are tied," Robinson said of White's title shot declaration. "Until he gets licensed, the UFC can’t book him a fight until he gets licensed. So right now it's all talk... Based upon when he gets licensed and it also depends on the winner of dos Santos and Cain fight come out unscathed. What if the winner comes out and has an injury and doesn't want to fight for eight months? So there's a lot of 'what ifs,' so right now we're just focusing on getting licensed, and once we get licensed then we'll figure out who we're going to fight."
"We'd still rather jump in and get a fight, so we'll see what happens. He would like to fight as soon as possible after he gets licensed. We're appreciative that Dana and Lorenzo [Fertitta] want him to fight for the title, and we're thankful for that, but right now the focused is to get licensed."
Penick's Analysis: By the time Overeem can get licensed, it will have been a year since his last fight. If he's taking on the winner of JDS-Cain, the fight's not likely to happen before March, meaning he'd have to be out an extra three months at the least. It's probably a lot more likely that he'll take on a different fight in January or on the Super Bowl weekend show the first weekend of February, then fight the winner of JDS-Cain for the UFC Heavyweight Championship.
[Alistair Overeem art by Grant Gould (c) MMATorch.com]
Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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