Time to air a little dirty laundry.
After Alistair Overeem was blamed for being the guy who injured light heavyweight champion Jon Jones in a training session, preventing him from taking on Daniel Cormier at UFC 178 next month, Overeem’s own teammate is now speaking out about the heavyweight’s poor training habits. Heavyweight Andrei Arlovski has trained alongside Overeem since April and says that he won’t anymore.
“I do not like to wash dirty linen in public, but in these words there is a weighty truth,” Arlovski told Sports.ru (via Bloody Elbow). “A few days ago I was sparring with Alistair Overeem and experienced firsthand how it can end. As usual sparring goes: men represent strikes, touch each other, but do not tend to cause real damage to the partner. During one of the highlights of our sparring Overeem hit me with the hardest knee kick in the stomach. In a real fight would turn out for me by knockout.”
Arlovski said that the knee sent him to the hospital and almost caused him to withdraw from his main event match against Antonio Silva on September 13.
“After that, I immediately went to the hospital to make sure that my ribs were not broken,” said Arlovski. “Thank God, everything turned out OK, although at first we were afraid that my fight with Bigfoot would be cancelled. It was so unexpected and so unpleasant that at first I even wanted to take revenge on him, at least hit him with his elbow. But my boxing coach, Andrei Ivchuk, turned around and reassured me. “Do not be like the people who allow themselves to such dirty tricks – he said. – No need to stoop to their level. ” As you can see, a competent coach – this is very important. Now I know that Overeem injured Jon Jones simply because he injures everyone with whom trains.”
