Alistair Overeem Not Impressed With Heavyweight Rankings, Worried M-1 Could Hold Strikeforce Hostage Again

On April 9th “The Demolition Man” Alistair Overeem (34-11, 1NC) will begin his follow up to a very successful 2010 by facing Fabricio Werdum in the opening quarterfinal bout of the Strikeforce World Grand Prix heavyweight tournament. This will be a rematch of their 2006 Pride bout that saw Werdum earn the second round submission win.
In an excellent interview with BJPenn.com writer Pedro Carraseco, Overeem talked about a great number of subjects. The Strikeforce/K-1/Dream champ offered his thoughts on the World heavyweight rankings, noting that odds makers provide a more accurate accounting of who’s best, his worries that M-1 Global could hold Strikeforce and the heavyweight tournament hostage by trying to renegotiating Fedor Emelianenko’s contract, Fedor’s chances against Antonio Silva, not wanting to fight for the UFC beause of their exclusivity contract, plus a lot more so be sure to check it out.
Here are a few quotes from that interview.

“I’m proud of all my accomplishments but if I have to pick one; it would be the K-1 Grand Prix title. People have to understand that winning the K-1 is very prestigious especially where I come from. The other reason I pick the K-1 title is because it’s rather unique that a M.M.A. champion wins the title, therefore it’s something nobody has done in the past, so that’s makes it more special.”
”Yes, sure a fight with Fedor is something I wanted for a long time but most important is that the fans want to see that fight. The only concern I have with M-1 is that the way they do business, they are very unpredictable and always find a way to hostage Strikeforce/Showtime to delay a fight or demand some crazy stuff. I don’t like it when people are trying to use boxing strategic to set up fights, we all know how boxing is doing popularity wise and the reason is that management is getting involved with promoting.
”You know people have to understand it’s not only a money thing. If you sign a UFC deal you are exclusive to them, we all know that I like to do K-1 as well and that my popularity there is very big, so why should I sign something and leave other options out, it don’t make sense. If a promotion wants exclusivity then they should bring a lot of money with them because I’m very happy that I can perform in two combat sports and doing very well in both of them.”