The UFC has just made the previously reported Rotterdam headliner official, announcing that Alistair Overeem will indeed be facing his teammate Andrei Arlovski on May 8th. The former Strikeforce champion is in London, and it’s where he addressed the fans and said he didn’t really have a problem accepting the contest.
“It would be a little stupid to think that fight would not happen eventually,” Overeem said. “We were kinda training separate anyways, since we kinda felt it coming… At least I did.”
Overeem says he has already fought teammates before in kickboxing matches, so he didn’t really hesitate taking a fight against someone he wasn’t really close with.
“We didn’t really train together,” he said about their relationship. “You can maybe count it in one hand, maybe two all together. We don’t socialize. We’re not friends. We don’t train together. We see each other, say hello, there’s respect of course. He’s a teammate, but there’s not much of a relationship.”
“I’ve fought teammates in the past. I fought Tyrone Spong. I fought Saki in K-1. Saki, I was pretty close to at the time,” he said. “I’ve fought friends before. I don’t have a problem fighting Andrei, who is not my friend. He’s my teammate.”
Alistair confirmed that they’ll just be training at the same gym on different times, with likely one of them going during mornings, and the other during evenings. He says they have yet to figure out how to split the other coaches at JacksonWink MMA, but Greg Jackson has already gone on record to say that he will be in Arlovski’s corner for that fight.
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