Alistair Overeem NOT Defending Strikeforce Heavyweight Title in Heavyweight GP

Last Updated on Saturday, 15 January 2011 10:59 Thursday, 13 January 2011 20:05

Written by Dave Walsh

There were a few minor announcements on today's Strikeforce conference call, like only the final of the tournament will be a five round fight. Wait a minute, doesn't that fly in the face of the interviews Scott Coker had been giving about every fight being five rounds and every fight with the title being a title fight? Absolutely.

As it turns out, the title is not on the line at all, the winner of the tournament walks away the Strikeforce 2010 Heavyweight Grand Prix Champion, but not the Strikeforce Heavyweight Champion. That means none of Alistair Overeem's fights will be for the Strikeforce Heavyweight Championship. Honestly, this does not bother me. When it comes down to it, one of my main criticisms of the tournament was the inclusion of the Heavyweight Champion and only his fights being five-round affairs. Many would note some of the "special rules" used in the earlier PRIDE GPs, and I'll be the first to point out that while we got Royce vs. Sakuraba, otherwise the special rules were a waste of time and things probably should have been uniform.

There was some other strange stuff that went down on this conference call (if you've never been on a Strikeforce conference call count yourself as lucky, they are a mess). Some of the other announcements were that there would be a "fourth judge" in case of a draw. This judge? Strikeforce-appointed. I can almost hear the squishing sound of your eyes rolling back into your head, but we'll give it a pass as the chance of a draw is very rare, outside of UFC title fights, apparently. The other announcement was that there will be a five-person committee to decide which reserve fighter to use in the case of a draw. I'm not quite sure why you just wouldn't have two reserve bouts, one for each side of the bracket, and if you reach the finals and neither side has been used, have the winning fighters face off for a 'finals reserve' or something similar.

Can't win them all, folks. The tournament will still be incredible. We still get a tournament featuring Fedor Emelianenko, Alistair Overeem, Josh Barnett, Andrei Arlovski, Fabricio Werdum, Brett Rogers, Sergei Kharitonov and Antonio Silva.

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