The Film Room: Alistair Overeem
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Combat sports legend Alistair Overeem will step inside the Octagon for his 90th professional MMA/kickboxing bout when he takes on submission specialist Alexey Oleynik in the UFC Fight Night 149 main event on Saturday at the Yubileyny Sports Complex in St. Petersburg, Russia. The former Dream and Strikeforce champion started his mixed martial arts career in 1999, and 20 years later, he remains one of the sport’s Top 10 heavyweights.
Overeem supplies the material for this edition of The Film
Room.
Back in the day, Overeem was known for bursting forward with combos and putting a relentless pace on his opponents. Now, his leading attacks are much more measured and never account for more than three to four strikes before he resets at a safe distance. Something to notice about the new Overeem is the number of feints he uses. Instead of just rushing forward, he now patiently waits for openings and sets traps with his feints and movement.
Along with this new patient style comes a newfound countering game for Overeem. He switches stances a lot during a fight, but most of his counters come from an orthodox stance, with the straight right as his go-to punch. Overeem is still much better when working on the lead, but it is nice to see that he can stay patient and work on the counter when needed.
Overeem has always had great kicks, but now he mainly uses them to keep distance between himself and the opponent. He switched his camp to Jackson-Wink MMA in 2014 and immediately started using the same kicks and tactics that Jon Jones uses to keep opponents at bay. He favors front kicks to the body since he can use them to achieve many different things. They work wonders at stopping aggressive opponents while slowly draining their cardio. Overeem also uses them to switch stances and set up strikes from the opposite stance.
Something Overeem still uses from the old days is the clinch. Notice how he fakes a takedown to get the opponents’ hands low and then comes back up to grab underhooks and drive them to the cage. Once in the clinch, he will hammer knees to the body but is smart enough to not get too aggressive and lose the position. Do not expect him to initiate the clinch at all in this fight since he does not want to risk going to the mat with Oleynik, but he does have 17 submission victories in his career and the exchanges on the ground might be more competitive than expected.
The biggest problem Overeem has faced as he ages is his ability to take a punch. With two decades of fighting on the odometer, the chin was bound to deteriorate -- especially with 13 knockout losses on his resume. Only time will tell if Overeem’s chin can hold up, but if it does, we could conceivably see him fighting for a title again in the near future.
Combat sports legend Alistair Overeem will step inside the Octagon for his 90th professional MMA/kickboxing bout when he takes on submission specialist Alexey Oleynik in the UFC Fight Night 149 main event on Saturday at the Yubileyny Sports Complex in St. Petersburg, Russia. The former Dream and Strikeforce champion started his mixed martial arts career in 1999, and 20 years later, he remains one of the sport’s Top 10 heavyweights.
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Overeem has been fighting for so long that he is now in the third
phase of his career; few fighters make it past their first. Early
on, he relied on athleticism and speed at 205 pounds and made a
name for himself during the 2005
Pride Fighting Championships middleweight grand prix. Then the
legend of “Ubereem” was born, as he made his full-time heavyweight
debut in 2007 and went 12-1-1 over the next four years, with all
but one of his wins coming by knockout or submission. Overeem later
started to age and the
Ultimate Fighting Championship linked arms with the United
States Anti-Doping Agency, which forced him to completely overhaul
his style and become the patient and tactical fighter we see today.
When he was younger, Overeem would stand and trade in the pocket
with anybody and was rarely concerned with defense. These days, he
puts a major focus on his defensive footwork and ability to
outsmart opponents from the outside with his length and two decades
of fighting knowledge. The newfound patient and tactical approach
allowed him to have a career resurgence, as he has gone 7-3 with
five knockouts since adopting this style in 2014.
Back in the day, Overeem was known for bursting forward with combos and putting a relentless pace on his opponents. Now, his leading attacks are much more measured and never account for more than three to four strikes before he resets at a safe distance. Something to notice about the new Overeem is the number of feints he uses. Instead of just rushing forward, he now patiently waits for openings and sets traps with his feints and movement.
Along with this new patient style comes a newfound countering game for Overeem. He switches stances a lot during a fight, but most of his counters come from an orthodox stance, with the straight right as his go-to punch. Overeem is still much better when working on the lead, but it is nice to see that he can stay patient and work on the counter when needed.
Overeem has always had great kicks, but now he mainly uses them to keep distance between himself and the opponent. He switched his camp to Jackson-Wink MMA in 2014 and immediately started using the same kicks and tactics that Jon Jones uses to keep opponents at bay. He favors front kicks to the body since he can use them to achieve many different things. They work wonders at stopping aggressive opponents while slowly draining their cardio. Overeem also uses them to switch stances and set up strikes from the opposite stance.
Something Overeem still uses from the old days is the clinch. Notice how he fakes a takedown to get the opponents’ hands low and then comes back up to grab underhooks and drive them to the cage. Once in the clinch, he will hammer knees to the body but is smart enough to not get too aggressive and lose the position. Do not expect him to initiate the clinch at all in this fight since he does not want to risk going to the mat with Oleynik, but he does have 17 submission victories in his career and the exchanges on the ground might be more competitive than expected.
The biggest problem Overeem has faced as he ages is his ability to take a punch. With two decades of fighting on the odometer, the chin was bound to deteriorate -- especially with 13 knockout losses on his resume. Only time will tell if Overeem’s chin can hold up, but if it does, we could conceivably see him fighting for a title again in the near future.
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