Valentijn Overeem Injured, Will Not Fight Antonio Silva at Strikeforce: "Henderson vs. Babalu 2"

While strikeforce looks to end the year with a good night of fights in the form of their upcoming “Henderson vs. Babalu 2” event, the show has gone far from smoothly. Jesse Finney pulled out of the event with a serious injury. One of the bigger attractions of the event, former football great Herschel Walker, also recently had to bow out due to a cut he suffered in training. And now another interesting match-up has gone the way of the dodo, as it’s recently been revealed that Valentijn Overeem has also been pulled from “Henderson vs. Babalu 2” due to injury-related reasons.

MMA Weekly reports that Valentijn, the older brother of current Strikeforce Heavyweight Champion Alistair Overeem, has been forced out of his upcoming bout with the only man to ever hold the Heavyweight Championship of the now-defunct EliteXC promotion, Antonio Silva. The exact injury he suffered has not been disclosed.

The man I’ve come to call “the other Overeem” will celebrate his fifteenth year as a professional Mixed Martial Artist when the calendar turns to 2011. Throughout his long career, Overeem has experienced virtually everything one could ever hope and even dread to experience as an MMA fighter. He’s fought over fifty times. He’s fought all over the world, and several times he’s competed in high-profile matches against high-profile competition in high-profile promotions. He once held a seven-fight win-streak, and fought seven times in one year. He’s also lost almost as many as he’s won, at one point even losing six fights in a row.

Clearly, this is a man with a gigantic amount of experience. Unfortunately, this is also a man with a gigantic amount of missed potential. Valentijn Overeem is the very definition of a high-and-low fighter. He’s 2-0 in his last two, 2-2 in his last four, and 4-6 in his last ten matches. Overeem clearly knows how to put some wins together, and he’s looked incredibly dominant at certain points in his career, but when this man loses, he loses big and loses often.

But at the end of the day, I suppose he’s warranted a spot in Strikeforce. If the UFC is willing to bring back stars like Gilbert Yvel and Paul Buentello, then Valentijn Overeem certainly isn’t hurting anybody by stepping into the Strikeforce cage and seeing how much is left in his tank. In fact, I think Valentijn and “Bigfoot” could have had a pretty exciting fight if it had happened. I think that Silva ultimately would have won, most likely by a crushing KO, but still, the fight would have been well worth watching.

It’s hard to say where Valentijn goes from here. He’s had an amazingly long career, and that’s both a positive and a negative. I don’t think we’ll ever see Overeem challenge his brother for the Strikeforce Heavyweight Championship, and I honestly don’t think that Valentijn will ever emerge out of the shadow of Alistair to the point where I’ll stop referring to him as “the other Overeem”. But at the end of the day, Valentijn Overeem is an exciting fighter with a history of looking to either knock someone out or get knocked out himself. No matter how you feel about him or about Strikeforce giving him a shot in their promotion, you’ve simply got to respect the man’s will and tenacity. While I won’t hold out any high hopes for Valentijn Overeem, I’ll certainly tune in to see how he does when/if he ever does get the chance to step inside the Strikeforce cage and test his skills.

And what about you, fans and friends? How do you feel about Valentijn Overeem and his chances in Strikeforce’s growing and wildly-competitive Heavyweight division?