Sherdog’s Top 10: Greatest MMA Strikers

8. Alistair Overeem

Overeem is one of the greatest strikers MMA has ever seen, but pinning down his exact skills is difficult, as they changed and evolved through the course of his career. When he started out, Overeem was a lanky light heavyweight. He was fast, fluid, and delivered quick, powerful, technical, and accurate strikes from a muay thai style. He would frequently open up with punches in bunches and engage in big toe-to-toe exchanges. Unfortunately, while Overeem's offense was certainly formidable, his shaky chin and frequently porous defense led to multiple knockout defeats. When Overeem became a heavyweight and started gaining muscle mass, his style changed. He became slower but his strikes were even more devastating. Also, he stopped throwing as many long combinations and began picking his spots, which made him a one-shot sniper, though it was harder for opponents to hit him. This led to periods of inactivity during a fight and Overeem simply covering up, but when he did explode, he could knock out any opponent on the planet. He had very short, powerful punches with no wind-up or telegraphing, but Overeem's greatest gift was his monstrous knees in the clinch, the finest that the sport of MMA has ever witnessed. A single powerful Overeem knee to the body or head would lead to many heavyweights collapsing like a pile of bricks.

Overeem's list of victims in MMA is nearly endless and includes a plethora of skilled strikers. He handed Bozigit Ataev his first loss via knee, devastated Sergei Kharitonov—a top five heavyweight at the time—with knees, outstruck Vitor Belfort in their rematch, took all of 19 seconds to finish Todd Duffee, folded up Brock Lesnar in the first round, beat up Roy Nelson for 15 minutes, knocked out Junior dos Santos, destroyed Andrei Arlovski with a head kick, dismembered Mark Hunt with knees, and won two close decisions over Fabricio Werdum to triumph in their trilogy. Of course, Overeem also suffered his fair share of knockout losses, largely related to the defensive weaknesses and shaky chin mentioned above, which were minimized but not wholly eliminated by his changes. Offensively, however, Overeem is one of the great forces in MMA history.

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