During his prime, Alistair Overeem was part of a talented group
of MMA heavyweights. | Glory Kickboxing
Heavyweight has never been the deepest division in MMA, but at its
peak, the weight class featured a number of top talents across
multiple promotions.
One of those skilled heavyweights was Alistair
Overeem, a former Strikeforce,
Dream
and K-1 champion. The Dutchman also challenged for heavyweight gold
in the
UFC. His last Octagon appearance came in 2021, and his last
combat sports fight came under the Glory Kickboxing banner in 2022.
He officially announced his retirement in 2023.
Over the course of his UFC tenure alone Overeem earned victories
against the likes of Fabricio
Werdum, Mark Hunt,
Andrei
Arlovski, Junior dos
Santos, Roy Nelson,
Frank
Mir and Brock
Lesnar.
Overeem admits that one would be hard-pressed to find that type of
star power in the heavyweight division today.
“It’s no secret that there is a decline, unfortunately, even though
the top guys will remain the top guys,” Overeem told Bloody Elbow. “It’s not as colorful as it once used to
be. There used to be 15 to 20 top-name heavyweights, which is now
not the case. They’ve kind of slowly declined, unfortunately.”
However, Overeem also admits that peaks and valleys are natural in
all combat sports.
“Before, we have also seen a similar style decline in K-1, in
kickboxing, and that kind of happened to MMA now, as well,” Overeem
said. “Boxing made a revival. Boxing came back. So I think it’s how
you can describe as the tides of life. Sometimes it goes up,
sometimes it goes down.
The Golden Era
Overeem pointed out that some parts of the world, such as Japan,
are not the MMA hotbeds as they once were during the heyday of
Pride Fighting Championships. For “Overeem,” the so-called
“golden era” of the sport occurred in the 90s and early 2000s, and
was a result of a broad interest in MMA worldwide.
“I have to say the golden era of MMA — Fedor, Big Nog, Wanderlei
Silva, Sakuraba and then later into the UFC Rich
Franklin, Brock
Lesnar, Ronda
Rousey, Jon Jones —
this originated in the different promotions and also the different
countries pushing the sport,” Overeem added. “There’s such a broad
landscape which is producing fighters. Also there is not much
coming from Japan these days. At the height, in the 90s and early
2000s, there was a lot of fighters coming from there — K-1 and MMA.
Which now is negligible. I think it’s a little bit like the tides.
Sometimes it’s there, sometimes it’s not there. Sometimes markets
get saturated, sometimes they dry up.