Bas Rutten on Overeem v. Fedor

If you're any sort of old school MMA fan, or a fan of PRIDE, you probably have the same soft spot in your heart for "El Guapo" Bas Rutten as I do.  The former King of Pancrase, UFC Heavyweight champion, and all around MMA ambassador keeps a somewhat lower profile these days (well lower profile for Bas), but over at Mixfight.nl he made some comments on Overeem v. Rogers that were worth sharing.  Please note that these comments are translated into English.

What an evening yesterday huh? What an incredible brute Alistair is. He just threw Rogers around the ring, even the commentators said "Rogers thrown like a rag doll", haha, what a force.

I must also just say that he looked really good, you could see he was much quicker in his movements, so the weight is much better for him, and he has added power.

Hey Alistair, congratulations my friend, I wonder if Fedor's camp will let him fight you.  I think you have shown them how dangerous you really are.  I mean, Fedor struggled with Rogers, but he did nothing to you!

So let's hope they do it. It's very easy, if he wants to be the champion, then it MUST happen! "To be the man, you have to beat the man!"

Godspeed and party on!

Bas

It will be interesting to see how much the Fedor v. Overeem talks heat up at this point.  It's obvious that this is the fight people want out of Fedor (aside from the logistically difficult UFC fights), but what's intriguing here is that I think this is the first time since the death of PRIDE that a fighter outside the UFC has really gained such support to face Fedor.  People were excited about both Arlovski and Barnett (and, to a lesser extent, Sylvia), but there was not this same level of "this fight must happen." Of course, the dangerous downside of this is that it will surely encourage M-1 to drive Fedor's price and their demands even higher, so it's definitely a long way from happening.  But for now, I'm with Bas.  Let's see this.