Fabricio Werdum Talks Title Fight Against Alistair Overeem

Tatame has an interesting interview with Fabricio Werdum (11-4-1), where he talked about his Strikeforce Heavyweight Title Fight against Alistair Overeem (29-11): 

I was so happy when my manager called about the fight, and a title fight changes everything, even to get sponsorship and other things. Everything is good, but it has to train three times, because it’s five rounds of five. I want to take that belt to have other proposals for other events. For now, I'm focused on Strikeforce, but at the same time I’m open to other proposals, because I have no exclusivity with Strikeforce.... What I want most is to take this belt, which is the second most important, after the UFC, next to Affliction.

I'm still training here with Rafael Cordeiro. I start to train at nine in the morning only Jiu-Jitsu with Cléber, and later with Rafael. It’s an academy on the side of the other, door to door. Later I do fitness and return to train more with Rafa. From Monday to Thursday we train here and, in Thursday, we train with Wanderlei. The same teacher of Wanderlei is the teacher of Randy Couture, so I train there Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and do the physical preparation with Alejarra also... It’s hard, since I went to Europe I didn’t stop training. There, I trained at the best team of Boxing and Muay Thai of Spain, so I'm fine.

On his game plan come fight time:

I’ll bring to my area, but is that thing: the fight starts standing. I’ll train standing as on the ground, but I’ll give more emphasis to the ground. I like to train and fight standing, and it hasn’t that thing of taking the fight directly to the ground. It’s difficult to take Overeem to the ground. In the other time that we fought, I couldn’t give him any takedown, and he took me down five times, so I was forced to fight standing with him. The strategy is this, take to the ground as soon as possible and submit.

Three years have passed [since the first fight] and much has changed. As I changed, he changed too. I know he’s heavier and stronger, but there is one thing: the stronger and heavier, the guy can get tired fast. In our other fight, he gave me a heat in the first round and began to get tired in the second. I can use this strategy too, just wait for him to get tired, but if I have how to finalize before, I will.

Werdum went on and said that Wanderlei Silva shouldn't retire yet and picked Antonio Minotauro Noguiera to win against Randy Couture by either guillotine or triangle choke. He also mentioned forgetting about actually signing his video game license deal and was pleasantly surprised to see himself on UFC Undisputed.

The two first fought at Pride: Total Elimination Absolute back in 2006, with Werdum winning by kimura in the second round. His last appearance was at UFC 90, where he lost via brutal first round knockout from the hands of rising heavyweight contender, Junior dos Santos. He was released from his UFC contract shortly after.