The UFC announced a huge heavyweight clash will take place on a UFC on Fox card in their first trip to Phoenix, Arizona on December 13th. We will see Alistair Overeem coming off of his knockout loss to take on returning Stefan Struve, who hasn’t fought since March of 2013 after overcoming a life threatening heart condition.
Struve and Overeem are interestingly similar in their fighting as they hail from the same background, Dutch kickboxing. Struve holds a significant reach and height advantage over Overeem but as fans have seen, Alistair has lethal knees in the clinch that could prove advantageous against a tall opponent. With both men having a strong background in striking and creating distance, there could very well be a takedown attempt early and an attempt to play into the Jiu Jitsu skills of each man. Stefan Struve is going to be a very different fighter than we have seen in the past as he has spent an extended time away from training and fighting. Whereas Overeem might be making changes to his style since he has tasted brutal defeat frequently in his recent past.
This is a very interesting matchup for Overeem for many reasons, most notably being that he has been brutally knocked out in three of his last four fights. Which is almost his entire UFC career, and it hasn’t been very memorable. He debuted against former champ Brock Lesnar and made easy work of the not so healthy man beast, but with NSAC troubles and licensing issues we didn’t see Overeem for almost two years. \
His comeback against Bigfoot Silva was supposed to be a safe win, and it looked to be headed that way after two rounds, but Silva turned up the attack in the third round, dropping Overeem to the mat and finishing him in a turnaround for the ages.
Further down the road Overeem met surging up and comer Travis Browne and was handling him quite easily, drilling him with knees and nearly stopping the fight. However, Browne made an impossible comeback and knocked out Overeem with a Anderson Silva esque front kick to the face. It was at this point that doubt started to set in and fans and analysts began to question if the hightly paid Overeem was a bust in the UFC.
Frank Mir was next in line and was completely dominated by Overeem who was very timid and technical throughout the fight.
Most recently Overeem fell victim to Big Ben Rothwell who made easy work of the former K-1 champion in less than three minutes. This has many critics doubting his real legacy, and calling Overeem things like “a bust” or “over rated.” Some are even calling for his release from the company. Dana White shot that down and granted him another main event fight, but what is yet to be told is if Alistair Overeem will be fighting for his job or not?
Moving to the other man in the fight, we look at Stefan Struve. He was a very promising young fighter who has shown potential for greatness but has always followed up those showings with a setback in his career. Struve’s debut came at age 21 against, then, future champion Junior Dos Santos and ended in a first round knockout loss.
Struve would rebound and rack up nine wins (eight by stoppage) and only three more losses in nearly 5 years. Those losses also came against top fighters in the division, Roy Nelson, Travis Browne, and Mark Hunt. Putting together winning streaks of three, two, and four fights respectively, Stefan Struve has really cemented himself in the heavyweight division as one of the best.
Unfortunately, life doesn’t always continue positively for some and it was revealed that Struve had a leaking Aortic valve around his also enlarged heart. This is known as a bicuspid aortic valve, which is a major threat to normal careers, it only intensifies with a professional fighter. After nearly two years and a multide of procedures, Struve’s comeback was scheduled against Matt Mitrione at UFC 175. Nevertheless, Struve was experiencing an elevated heart rate when the event started and had to be taken to the hospital for precautionary reasons. It turned out to be nothing, but of course nobody is taking any chances when a life could be at stake.
This brings up a huge question for Stefan Struve, is he going to be able to compete at this level for the rest of his career? Many fans remember the diverticulitis bout that shortened Brock Lesnar’s career and basically caused him to retire. This could be a similar situation in which Struve returns and can’t quite get back to a healthy state and causes him to retire.
Make sure to watch the UFC on Fox 13 on December 13th to see these two in action and see if some of the questions can be answered.
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