Standoff Between Alistair Overeem & Zuffa Over Heavyweight Grand Prix Date

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Alistair Overeem lobbed a hand grenade Zuffa’s way in his appearance on MMA Fighting’s The MMA Hour. The K-1 World Grand Prix, Dream Interim, Strikeforce and MMA lineal heavyweight champion told Ariel Helwani that Zuffa is trying to hold the Strikeforce Heavyweight World Grand Prix Semi-Finals on September 10, something he claims goes against an earlier agreement to hold the two matches in October. Overeem made it clear that he considers September too soon for him to come back after going three rounds against Fabricio Werdum in June and would not be returning before October. He told Helwani that Strikeforce responded by threatening to pull him from the tournament:

“For them to unilaterally declare, okay, [September 10] is going to be the second round, which I never agreed on, and then threaten me if I don’t want it, it…doesn’t really show a lot of respect”.

He went on to make clear that he will be in action come October, even if he hasn’t made his peace with Strikeforce.

“The thing is, there’s other promotions. There’s other stuff I can do. K-1’s going to come back. There’s some good reports on that. There’s some other promotions in the world that would love to have me fight. So for me, the respect thing is definitely a factor and it’s definitely important.”

A Comics Nexus original, Will Cooling has written about comics since 2004 despite the best efforts of the industry to kill his love of the medium. He now spends much of his time over at Inside Fights where he gets to see muscle-bound men beat each up without retcons and summer crossovers.