The trilogy bout between Alistair Overeem and Badr Hari is set.
AD.nl made the news official, first reporting the matchup. Overeem signed with GLORY back in June of last year, and was initially scheduled to return in October against heavyweight champion Rico Verhoeven. However, Overeem was sidelined with an injury ahead of the bout.
Now, the 42-year-old will return to take his first professional kickboxing fight since 2010. He exited the sport on a five-fight win streak. His last defeat hasn’t come since 2009 when he was finished by none other than Hari himself via first-round TKO as a result of the two-knockdown rule.
Now, he’ll get the chance to avenge that loss. As for Hari, he’s currently on a three-fight losing streak inside the ring, with two No Contests to go along with it. His last victory hasn’t come since August of 2015.
When Overeem and Hari did meet for the very first time in December of 2008 in Japan, Overeem finished Hari with a left hook in the first round. Hari would avenge that loss the following year, leaving them 1-1 heading into this third fight.
Overeem ventures back into kickboxing after a career in mixed martial arts (MMA) lasting over 20 years. “The Demolition Man” has competed for promotions such as PRIDE FC, Strikeforce, DREAM, and, of course, the UFC.
Now, Overeem will look to see if he can return over a decade later and increase his win streak to six in the world of kickboxing. GLORY Collision 4 will take place this October with no official date or venue set as of this writing.
Alistair Overeem couldn’t help but smile when addressing news that he will be making his pro-wrestling debut in July when less than a year earlier he had some very unflattering opinions about the profession.
At the time, Overeem was addressing former opponent Brock Lesnar, who rose to fame in World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) before eventually becoming the UFC heavyweight champion, as well as two-time octagon veteran CM Punk.
“It’s lame, it’s stupid,” Overeem said back in 2021. “It’s not even a sport. It’s just lame. It’s bad acting. It’s just lame. Sorry for all the fans of WWE, but I’m just being honest. I’m just giving my opinion. Free country, right?
“I think it’s lame, and because I hadn’t seen it for 20 years. I never watched Brock fight. I never watched CM Punk fight. I knew they were from WWE.”
Just 10 months after making those comments, Overeem has been training professional wrestling as he prepares for a matchup against Adam Scherr — best known as former WWE superstar Braun Strowman — in the main event of a card being held in England on July 9.
Addressing his sudden shift from adamant detractor to active participant, Overeem admitted his perspective has changed, but his opinion has also evolved on other activities as well.
“Life is interesting, let me put it that way,” Overeem said on The MMA Hour. “Cause on the one hand you’re like, ‘Oh yeah, you’re talking smack and then you’re doing it yourself.’ Not too big a fan of it lately, but again, in my defense, I was a huge fan in the 80s when I was 8 or 9 or 10, 11, 12 [years old]. So it’s been up and down, and now it’s up again.
“I was always, just to remind you, not too flattering about kickboxing guys. I’m kickboxing now. I was kickboxing 10 years ago. I was kickboxing 25 years ago, so that’s a little bit of the up and down thing, right?”
Since signing to make his debut, Overeem has been training to prepare for his first match, and he’s already acclimated to the world of sports entertainment where the performers are incredibly athletic while also taking part in a theatrical production.
According to Overeem, he’s felt prepared enough to step through the ropes for his first match already, but he’s happy to continue working to get better before finally making his debut.
“You need to do [train], otherwise, it’s not going to go too good,” he said. “Of course the MMA background helps cause you’re used to falling and doing all the moves but this is a little bit different. Hats off to the guys [who do professional wrestling].
“I’m confident in my abilities. As an athlete, as a fighter, I just somehow have the ability that if I put my mind to it, I will just kick some ass.”
Alistair Overeem isn’t done competing.
“I wasn’t built for a nine-to-five job,” says a smiling Overeem, whose athletic build remains as timeless as his look. “And I’m not done yet.”
Now 42, the future UFC Hall of Famer is stepping outside the Octagon and returning to kickboxing for the first time in over a decade. Overeem is set to headline Glory: Collision 4 in the Netherlands this October, facing off against Badr Hari in a trilogy bout.
The first meeting between the two fighting icons took place in 2008, which saw a left hook from Overeem knock out Hari. The rematch was the following year, a TKO victory for Hari. Nearly a decade and a half later, the two heavyweights will seek closure this fall.
“I’m from the Netherlands, so this is like a home match for me,” Overeem says. “It’s destiny for me to return to kickboxing and Glory.”
Bumppp
Dude I watched the interview with Ariel the other day and fuck if I Overeem is back way Uber. Dude looked like he got muscles implanted in face.
Neither Alistair Overeem nor Bard Hari bear any ill will towards each other anymore.
Saturday, Overeem and Hari face off in a trilogy kickboxing match at Glory: Collision 4. Back in 2008, Hari was highly critical of Overeem heading into their first fight, but was upset by a first-round knockout, the win the put Overeem on the kickboxing map. The two men rematched a year later with Hari finishing Overeem in the 2009 K-1 World Grand Prix Semifinals. Now, nearly 13 years since the two last met, Overeem and Hari will face each other once again, and while this first two encounters were flush with animosity, over a decade of combat sports experience has seemingly mellowed both men.
“I’ve only got love for Badr,” Overeem said when he and Hari went on The MMA Hour together. *“*Throughout the years we’ve trained a little bit together, we’ve spoke a little bit together, I have a lot of respect for him. He’s had a rough patch but he’s shown beautiful things in the ring, and I know his technical ability, I know what he’s capable of. I know what he has done. He’s one of the guy, one of the pioneers. So it’s going to be an awesome fight and my hat’s off to Badr.
“After we fought, this was nine years ago, we trained together, and then already my attitude was different. But it also comes with age and it also comes with falling from your stature. I’ve had my fall from grace, and it humbles you. It manners you and it just shows you that all that, ‘Blah, blah, blah,’ it’s about nothing. Badr is very similar to me. He is actually me, just a different rout. But he’s a fighter and we have a lot of similarities, and throughout the years you see the similarities. Also, he’s career ups and downs, I’ve had my ups and downs, he’s like me. Just a different path.”
Like Overeem, Hari set aside old grievances long ago, and admits to underestimating Overeem as a kickboxer the first time the two met. But after suffering that hard loss to Overeem, and his ensuing 13 years of combat sports excellence, Hari says it would be hard not to have respect for “The Reem.”
“After all these years, you don’t see it like this. It’s not personal at all,” Hari said. “I just want to win this fight, I just want to enjoy, and knocking people out is the most beautiful thing in our sport. It gives a feeling of domination. This is just the cherry on the pie. For me, it’s not personal, it’s just me enjoying still standing here. Where the rivalry changed, I think it changed because if you see somebody fighting for all these years, you know what it takes to be on top for all these years. It takes a lot of dedication, a lot of hard work. You have to push everything to the side, so you know when you’re looking at the other guy that this guy has been putting in the same work that you have been doing for all these years. So I think it’s difficult to not be respectful for somebody who has been fighting in this game for so long, because it’s like looking at yourself in a mirror… So of course it’s not personal. I’ve got respect for everything he did. But still, Saturday is Saturday. I want to win.”
But despite the mutual respect, some remnants of the old competitive tension still peak through. Hari has not won inside the ring since 2015 (he did beat Hesdy Gerges in 2018, but the result was overturn to a No Contest after both men tested positive for PEDs), and so, despite himself having not even fought in kickboxing in 12 years, Overeem said that Hari was not someone he was targeting to compete against, something Hari took a bit of umbrage with.
“I was going to fight Rico [Verhoeven], but Rico is doing Dancing With The Stars or whatever, Dancing On Ice,” Overeem said. “Badr wanted to fight me. To be honest, Badr — I like you, we’re not friends or anything but there’s a respect there — you’re not on the greatest track, so I was not going to challenge a wounded animal. But you wanted this fight so I was like, okay, let’s go, because I’m not going to say no.”
“I don’t know how this fight happened, but it was not me challenging you,” Hari interjected. “Glory just made this fight happen. ‘Do you want to fight Alistair?’ I said yes. So I don’t know who informed you but you were misinformed. It’s not me who challenged you. But I’m like any fighter, you tell me, ‘You want to fight Alistair?’ and I’m like yeah, bring him. It’s not me challenging you, it’s Glory. They paid me, they asked if I wanted to fight Alistair and I said yes, because this is the only way to become great. And yeah, bro, a wounded lion is still a lion. Let’s see.”
Overeem quickly put the misunderstanding down to the actions of the promotion and the respect quiescence remained in tact, but come Saturday, when the fight begins, Hari for one, says that all gets set aside until they settle their business.
“Listen, you shouldn’t mix things up, because at the end, we are killers,” Hari said. “At the end of the road, if you are there Saturday, Oct. 8, and he punches me in the face or I punch him in the face, all this respect is gone. This is who you are as a fighter. You can be respectful but that doesn’t say nothing about the rivalry between me and him. The moment he starts kicking me and trying to hurt me, believe me, I will do everything to finish him. So don’t get confused, this is just respect for somebody who is too long in the game.”
Glory: Collision 4 takes place this Saturday at the GelreDome in Arnhem, Netherlands.
Longtime kickboxing rivals Alistair Overeem and Badr Hari will finally complete their trilogy in the GLORY: “Collision 4” main event, a heavyweight showdown locked and loaded for Sat., Oct. 8, 2022 inside GelreDome in Arnhem, Netherlands.
“Demolition Man” and “Bad Boy” came face-to-face at today’s official weigh ins.
Hari was stopped by Overeem when they first went to war at Fields Dynamite! back in late 2008 (see it here). They would rematch roughly a year later and the Moroccan striker scored his first-round revenge as part of the K-1 World Grand Prix Final (replay here).
Hari, 37, has not seen the win column since summer 2018, racking up four losses and a pair of No Contests, including his bizarre battle against Arkadiusz Wrzosek last March, which came to a halt when the crowd went into business for itself.
As for Overeem, who turned 42 just a few months back, he’s been inactive since parting ways with UFC in early 2021. “Demolition Man” was expected to compete against Rico Verhoeven last October; however, a late injury brought a hasty end to that fan-friendly fight.
I wild each it…?
I listened to them on Ariel. It was a great interview. Hari won me over. I hope it is a great fight. I hope teen wins and retires while he has two brain cells to run together
Rooting for Reem.
I think Reem has Reemed