When Alistair Overeem suffered a first-round KO loss to Stipe Miocic at UFC 203, the heavyweight kickboxer sparked a big controversy.
Alistair Overeem is still classified as one of the UFC‘s biggest signings ever after joining the promotion from Strikeforce in 2011 and knocking Brock Lesnar out in his debut fight.
Despite being regarded as one of the greatest heavyweights of all time, Overeem never managed to win the UFC heavyweight title, going down as one of the best fighters to never win a title in the promotion.
Throughout his 10-year UFC tenure, ‘The Demolition Man’ only fought for the heavyweight title once, and that was against Stipe Miocic at UFC 203.
Overeem almost scored title win over Miocic during UFC 203 main event
Coming off the back of four extremely impressive wins, Overeem was awarded a title shot against Miocic at UFC 203 in Stipe’s home state, Cleveland, Ohio.
This was Miocic’s first defense of his heavyweight title reign after dethroning Fabricio Werdum just a few months prior.
Early on in the fight, the Dutch kickboxer showcased his incredible kicking arsenal, landing some heavy kicks to the body of the champion.
And then, just over a minute into the fight, Overeem dropped Miocic with a huge left hand, subsequently chasing him to the ground in an attempt to finish the fight.
However, instead of raining down some hellacious ground-and-pound to finish the fight, Overeem latched onto the neck of Miocic and attempted to submit him with a guillotine.
At points, it seemed as though the choke was in deep and Miocic did make some movements with his hand, however, the champion quickly escaped out of the choke.
With just under a minute left of the first round, Stipe caught a leg of Overeem and got the fight to the ground. From there, he unleashed terrifying ground-and-pound, knocking Overeem out cold.
Overeem accused ref of missing a tap but Joe Rogan called his bluff
Immediately after the fight, the challenger complained to referee Marc Goddard that Miocic tapped whilst he was in the guillotine early in the round.
And then, when Joe Rogan went to interview him in the Octagon following the fight, Overeem claimed that the referee missed a tap.
“There’s one thing I can say about the fight, I believe when I punched him and he went down, I followed him and got him in a guillotine and I clearly felt a tap, the ref didn’t see it, the ref didn’t jump in, in my opinion he tapped,” Overeem said as the Ohio crowd began to boo.
“We’ll have the truck pull it up, let’s take a look at it,” Rogan said as replays began to show.
“You dropped him, you had him hurt, you grabbed a hold of the guillotine, you held on strong… Tell us when you see the tap? You felt like it was in the beginning? Did you see it there? Where do you see the tap? That looks like he’s trying to find his way through your arms. It didn’t look like a tap,” Rogan said as he called Overeem’s bluff.
Overeem was subsequently booed out of the Octagon by the fans in attendance in Ohio, after making a claim that turned out to be false.