UnderGround Forum >> Bas Rutten on Overeem loss.

From his Facebook page. FRAT warning!

OK, many people asked me, so lets talk about the Overeem fight.
I had a lot of heat from “new fans” (I guess), or fans that never check stats on fighters.
Let me be perfectly clear, I started fighting September 1993, yes that’s right, even before the UFC had their first show! So I have been around a very long time, in September actually 20 years!

During that time, you all know that I always speak my mind, I will NOT make something up because I don’t like a certain fighter personally, because when I am wrong, it makes me look like an idiot and I simply don’t like to look like an idiot.

Same as that you won’t find even one product that I endorse which is not good, everything I endorse I stand 100% behind. I could have made much more money if I wanted, but then I had to endorse something that I didn’t believe it, so I never did.

Before the fight I said that: ” Overeem is an animal, really good striker, great on the ground as well, hard G&P, he only has to connect and the fight will probably be over, and that for a HW, he always comes “in shape”. But…. he has a “glass jaw”.
Now saying that he has a “glass jaw”, doesn’t means he’s gonna lose. I mean, he became the K1 Champion and those guys are the BEST strikers in the world, and they couldn’t hit him. So he will probably win this fight against BF, I am just saying that Big Foot has upset the world before and stopped Fedor (Freaking Fedor people!! In my book still the greatest), so he can do it again!”

Now, from this whole statement above that I made about AO, I think I gave him a lot of props? I ONLY said he had a glass jaw, (which is true), but for some reason many fans forgot the props I gave him and ONLY focused on the “glass jaw” comment. THAT just blows my mind. And especially because they said I only mentioned the “glass jaw” because I don’t like him?

OK, let’s break this down:
From 2005 till 2007 he had 7 fights from which he lost 5 and 4 of those losses were by way of KO. (Shogun KO’d him as well three fights before those 7 fights) The whole world of MMA at that time was saying he had a glass jaw (from his THEN 11 losses, 7 were by KO, now 12-8), not only me.

And, I said, “because he has a glass jaw, that’s why Overeems team GG changed his weight and his fighting style after he lost his last fight against Kharitonov”.
From that moment on he would only throw “single attacks”, meaning, there will always be at least ONE hand on his jaw!

When AO was going to fight JDS (Before he got caught with roids there was talk about it), people asked me who I thought would win and I said “JDS”, which I truly believe would happen (I don’t care what other people think, it’s what I think).
Then they said, “You just say this because you don’t like AO”. I said “Really? So why did I tell people that he was going to beat Brock Lesnar? I mean, didn’t like him as a person at that time already but I still said he would beat Lesnar”. So how’s that possible when you “reason” like you do? Of course it would become silent….

And about the fight, I am not going into the “other things” people are talking about, I only say this:
I don’t think AO underestimated BF because he would be a complete idiot if he did, NEVER look pass your fight, every fighter knows this, plus again, BF stopped the great Fedor! I think the reason he lost is that he steered away from his team (GG), where a guy like Gokhan Saki would work circles around him in training, you NEED guys like that to train with because now he steered away from the “one strike attacks” and from “always having at least one hand on his jaw”, he actually didn’t have ANY hands at his jaw?
(Don’t be dumb now and say that he beat Saki in the K1, because yes he did, but the world knew also that Saki had a broken hand and ARM going into that fight, ask anybody who has seen them spar together about who comes out on top)

He steered away from his “winning combination”. He started throwing combinations and that will open him up for counters. I believe in training (wherever he trains now) that he’s probably the best guy there and that nobody really poses a threat to him. Think about it, because that could be the only reason for him to steer away from what he used to do, from what he used to "NEED TO DO" otherwise he would get floored in training because of the talent he trained with.

That’s what I think, now I know he was very rude towards BF and maybe his “acting” started to take over and he started to believe himself and forgot about Fedor, so maybe he did get a little “over confident”, but still, never break a winning combination.

My stretch routine in the classes I teach has been exactly the same for the last 15 years, sometimes the students ask me “Can’t we do something different?”. And you know what I say? Say: “No, because with this routine I NEVER, EVER had an injury, so why would I change it?

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

Godspeed and party on