Fresh off the biggest win of his career, Fabricio Werdum is hungrier than ever. | Photo: Dave Mandel
When Fabricio Werdum next sets foot inside the cage, nearly a year will have passed since he became the first man in a decade to defeat Fedor Emelianenko. The challenge ahead of him appears no less daunting.
Unbeaten in his last 10 outings, Overeem has emerged as one of the sport’s most feared heavyweights. The 31-year-old Golden Glory representative has stopped six straight opponents, five of them in less than two minutes. A staggering 33 of his 34 career victories have resulted in finishes. They call him the “Demolition Man” for a reason.
Alistair Overeem File Photo
Overeem has finished his last six
MMA opponents in the first round.
Werdum has history on his side. He submitted Overeem with a second-round kimura under the Pride Fighting Championships banner five years ago. Motivation will not be an issue. Even after dethroning the incomparable Emelianenko, Werdum feels as though he has plenty to prove to the mixed martial arts community, especially against a striker and kickboxer of Overeem’s caliber. Training out of Kings MMA in California, he believes he has what it takes to turn away the surging Dutchman once more.
“Training camp went amazingly [well] and had an impressive energy about it,” says Werdum, a two-time Abu Dhabi Combat Club Submission Wrestling World Championships gold medalist. “The camp I had before I fought Fedor was also great, but this time, I feel it went even better, especially with everything that happened after my win.”
Werdum, who submitted Emelianenko with a first-round triangle choke last June, holds black belts in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, judo and muay Thai. Operated by former Chute Boxe Academy trainer Rafael Cordeiro, the Kings MMA gym where Werdum is based has grown in both prominence in quality. His training partners now include onetime UFC light heavyweight champion Mauricio “Shogun” Rua, former Pride middleweight titleholder Wanderlei Silva and current UFC middleweight contender Mark Munoz.
“I think it’s all in my favor, and I’ll give the crowd a real show,” says Werdum, who has delivered eight of his 14 professional wins by submission. “Don’t doubt it, and don’t miss the fight.”
Silva, who will face Chris Leben at UFC 132 in July, turned to Twitter to answer those who doubt Werdum’s progress under Cordeiro, the man who awarded the 6-foot-4, 238-pound Brazilian his black belt in muay Thai.
“I went home quietly today,” Silva wrote. “I checked in [at] Kings MMA and saw a big guy, looked at him, he looked at me, and I said: ‘What are you looking at, bro?’ I thought: ‘He is big, but he’s not two [men]’ and called him for a sparring session. I started well, but suddenly ... everything got black, [there] was blood [all] over the walls. Oh, that big guy was Fabricio Werdum. The man is keen, [and he is] training really hard.”
“
I think it’s all in my
favor, and I’ll give
the crowd a real show.
Don’t doubt it, and
don’t miss the fight.
”
-- Werdum, on his Overeem rematch
Werdum laughed at “The Axe Murderer’s” description of his sparring exploits and preferred not to discuss them further. Instead, he chose to highlight the philosophy present at Kings MMA.
“We spar really hard every time, and anything can happen in moments like those,” Werdum says. “One day, [Renato] ‘Babalu’ [Sobral] told me, ‘You don’t comment on training,’ and I never do. Wanderlei did, but it’s OK. It was a normal situation, nothing special.”
Cordeiro is the man in which Werdum has placed his trust.
“Rafael always asks us to give 100 percent of our energy on the sparring sessions, to make it feel like a fight,” he says. “We’re friends and we joke with each other, but training is serious. If we don’t make it serious, we don’t help each other.”