Anthony Johnson open to catchweight bout against Alistair Overeem

Bloody Elbow 2.0 | Anton Tabuena

Alistair Overeem may be spiraling down one of the most anti-climatic UFC runs in the history of the promotion, yet he continues to have fighters interested in sharing an octagon with him, the latest of which is former training partner Anthony Johnson.

The rising light-heavyweight contender recently spoke to BloodyElbow’s Steph Daniels regarding his interest in taking a “personal” fight against Overeem and he followed up on those comments during his appearance on The MMA Hour.

“I’ll fight him, I don’t care. I’ve already trained with him before,” Johnson said. “Why not? To me it’s just a fight. If the fans want to see it, I’m down to do it. I ain’t said no to any fight ever.

“I’d meet him at a catchweight,” Johnson added. “If he wanted to meet me at 225, let’s do it. Or whatever, 220, I’d do that. Or I’d meet at 230 at the dot, if he was down to go that far. Let’s do it. Even if I fought him, it’s a dangerous fight. He’s still got weapons that are crazy. He was hitting Ben with some crazy knees. He’s a dangerous fighter still, but I’d definitely test him.”

Overeem’s most recent defeat came at the hands of Ben Rothwell, who demolished “The Reem” in less than three minutes of fight time to put the former Strikeforce and K-1 champion at 2-3 under the UFC banner with three T/KO losses.

While Johnson made his personal feelings towards Overeem vehemently clear, he remained complimentary of the Dutchman’s skills as a fighter and to his career accomplishments overall. In fact, he even went so far as to call him one of the top heavyweights in the world.

“He’s still one of the top heavyweights in the world, in my opinion,” Johnson added. “I don’t think they’re going to get rid of him. I mean, he’s still going to sell tickets. People want to see him either win or lose, you know what I’m saying? It’s not like when Anderson (Silva) was fighting or GSP was fighting, when Chuck (Liddell) was fighting. They wanted to see those guys dominate somebody. With him, they almost want to see him get beat up now, because of things he’s done or things he’s said, or whatever. (He) got caught up with some stuff that just changed people’s view of him.”

Transcription taken from MMAFighting.com.

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About the author

Karim Zidan

Karim Zidan is a investigative reporter and feature writer focusing on the intersection of sports and politics. He has written for BloodyElbow since 2014 and has served as an associate editor since 2016. He also writes for The New York Times and The Guardian. Karim has been invited to speak about his work at numerous universities, including Princeton, and was a panelist at the South by Southwest (SXSW) film festival and the Oslo Freedom Forum. He also participated in the United Nations counter-terrorism conference in 2021. His reporting on Ramzan Kadyrov’s involvement in MMA, much of which was done for Bloody Elbow, has led to numerous award nominations, and was the basis of an award-winning HBO Real Sports documentary.