Consider the following two statements:
“Alistair Overeem will knock out Badr Hari, and go 50/50 with Remy Bonjasky.”
“Anderson Silva can hang with Roy Jones Jr.”
If the following statements were made in December 2008, following the K-1 Grand Prix, it’s hard to say which would have been mocked more.
One of the most persistent stories among fight fans is the idea that mixed martial artists do not have anywhere near the level of striking that K-1 fighters or boxers have. Most examples of fighters crossing over are easily dismissed because the MMA fighters fight low-end or washed up fighters, but the Alistair Overeem example has arguably blown the myth wide open.
Overeem has roots in kickboxing, but he has never been considered an elite striker in MMA. He will now be considered as such, only because of his performances in K-1. For most of his career, Overeem was a gatekeeper to the top. He beat guys he should beat, but lost to Liddell, Arona, Nogueira, Shogun (twice), and Kharitonov. It’s not that he was out-struck in all of these fights, but he hardly ever overwhelmed fighters the way Mirko did in his early days.
Is everyone as sure as they were just a few months ago that Melvin Manhoef would destroy Anderson Silva in a kickboxing match? Is there still no chance that Silva could hang with a boxer well past his prime if he was given significant time to train for the fight? I can’t even imagine what a Silva-Jones fight would even look like, because I’ve never seen the current Anderson Silva do pure boxing, but I think the time for such surefire assumptions is behind us.
Perhaps MMA strikers have been underrated. Maybe their exposure to western boxing gives them an advantage over a lot of K-1 fighters. Maybe their exposure to Thai boxing and other striking styles would give them an advantage in a boxing fight. Maybe doing so many things makes them very adaptable, or maybe the fact that they’re used to getting hit with small gloves makes them very durable.
It’s hard to say, but Alistair Overeem has destroyed the persistent myth that a good MMA striker would be destroyed by any decent K-1 striker. Is he an aberration, or a sign of things to come?