Sherdog’s Top 10: Inside Fighters

6. Alistair Overeem

Perhaps due to his victory in the K-1 World Grand Prix in 2010, prevailing opinion seems to regard Overeem as a range striker. This is a mistake. While he is hardly a novice on the outside, the real strength of his game is and always has been his sterling work in the clinch. In fact, K-1 changed its ruleset to render fighters like Buakaw Banchamek (formerly Por Pramuk) and Overeem less effective, banning the double-collar tie altogether and introducing stricter time limits on clinch work. Most can remember K-1 commentator Michael Schiavello’s excited shriek about the “uber-knee” from Overeem that nearly decapitated Ewerton Teixeira, and that moment effectively sums up the core of his approach during his time as a world-class kickboxer.

Early in his Pride Fighting Championships run, the Dutchman relied heavily on his inside game, and in doing so introduced the sport to the concept of jumping knees from the collar tie, in addition to his trips, throws and command of the various components of the clinch. To give an example, he badly beat up another accomplished infighter, Mauricio Rua, at close range in one of their bouts before “Shogun” eventually knocked him out. Overeem only improved as his career progressed, making increasingly slick use of a standing guillotine against numerous foes; he dominated accomplished infighter Fabricio Werdum in the clinch, kneed Brock Lesnar’s surgically repaired innards into oblivion and took apart Stefan Struve piece by piece.

Leaving aside his ridiculous physical strength, Overeem’s inside game showcases incredible diversity and skill. He throws some of the most mechanically perfect knees in the sport -- from a technical perspective, only Anderson Silva rivals him -- and transitions seamlessly between those strikes, Thai dumps, judo-style trips and throws and his ruthless standing guillotine.

Even today, the clinch remains the strength of Overeem’s game, and he stands as one of the sport’s true innovators in clinch fighting.

Number 5 » He epitomizes the brutal, violent clinch work in mixed martial arts, the spiritual ancestor of modern infighting who demonstrated once and for all that the clinch was not just a place to win rounds or grind away but to beat the stuffing out of your opponent.