Alistair Overeem made a successful return into the kickboxing ring at GLORY Collision 4 yesterday as he saw his fellow veteran Badr Hari come up short and beat him in what was generally speaking an entertaining bout.
Hari, who has now lost 7 of his last matches is on the brink of retiring as he announced in his post-match speech yesterday. Hari has been around in the sport for over two decades in which he fought 125 matches, won 106, of which 92 on knock-out. An impressive record for sure. He has gone without a win since 2015 after losing consecutive matches against Rico Verhoeven (2), Hesdy Gerges, Benjamin Adegbuyi, Arkadius Wrzosek (2) and Overeem now as well and is considering that it's time to pack up his boxing gloves.
As was expected, Overeem wasted no time to call out Rico Verhoeven, who was also present at the fight and entered the ring after the match, for his title defence. The two ended up in in a heated exchange of words and will look at GLORY to get this fight on the cards. Verhoeven will first have to fight Gerges at HIT IT, another sports-entertainment event, at the end of this month.
According to Overeem, Verhoeven is no longer entitled to his heavyweight title after having been out of action at GLORY for a year. Overeem questions the fact that the champion will fight at another event outside of GLORY which also happens to be organised by himself. Verhoeven strongly disagrees and has indicated that he would deeply welcome the opportunity to fight Overeem at the start of next year. Verhoeven: "It's going to be a massacre. Tonight the pace was not very high. Alistair was huffing and puffing already - he is not prepared for the pace that I fight at as well as the fact that we will be fighting more rounds than he did tonight.”
As we wrote yesterday, the decision to let Verhoeven fight in a different tournament and not defend his title this year at all has raised eyebrows across the industry, including with Overeem.
After the fight, the 42-year-old Overeem did a couple of post-match interviews in which he reflected back on his victory but couldn’t resist giving his thoughts on the situation around Verhoeven. "Verhoeven seemed very agitated tonight. I find it strange that he is going to do his own promotional event this month. I fought in the US for ten years in America and this would never have been allowed. I think it's GLORY’s blunder. It shouldn't have been allowed that he's not defending his title this year, so therefore, it's actually vacant. The rumour that his eye injury had him out of the competition until now is untrue, why would he then be able to fight in a different tournament? The sequence of events stinks in my opinion."
And how will the rest of the heavyweight division respond to all of this? It was Overeem's first kickboxing match in over a decade and if he immediately gets the opportunity to fight for the title whilst the numbers 1 & 2 of the division are currently suspended on questionable grounds, it will be interesting to follow if GLORY will be able to back up the sidelining of Plazibat and Ben Saddik.
