UFC 203: Stipe Miocic vs. Alistair Overeem Toe to Toe Preview – A Complete Breakdown

Stipe Miocic vs. Alistair Overeem is the main event for heavyweight’s main prize this weekend of September 10, 2016 at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio.

One sentence summary:

Phil: Everybody Hurts in this long-anticipated match of Reem vs R.E.M…. wait, wrong Stipe.

David: Overeem looks to fulfill his life long quest of fighting efficiently after three minutes against life long firefighter, part time UFC champion.

Stats:

Record: Stipe Miocic 15-2 Alistair Overeem 41-14-1 NC

Odds: Stipe Miocic -135 Alistair Overeem +115

History / Introduction to the fighters

Phil: Every heavyweight has to have at least one embarrassing, horrorshow loss. For Stipe it was against Stefan Struve, which is quite a bad one to have in all honesty. This combined with significant time on the shelf helped to keep Stipe under the radar. He was a +280 underdog to Roy Nelson(!), and when he lost a razor thin decision to JDS it was put down to Cigano being done rather than a great fight between two elites.

So he snuck up on the heavyweight title. This stealthy approach was enabled by the way that he represents what would be a “normal” fighter in a different weight class: a skilled wrestleboxer. In the division of freaks, perhaps the greatest freak is the regular joe.

David: I was a massive Miocic skeptic because I could never shake that Struve fight out of my head: watching it again it’s kind of amazing how plodding he looks compared to what he’s grown into. His growth is often understated until you watch that Struve bout again. I’m still a modest skeptic though. I feel like a few fighters have the potential to derail his cinderella narrative. Except this isn’t unbearable oscar bait directed by Ron Howard, so should Stipe end up being the Heavyweight stability we’ve been waiting for, I won’t complain.

Phil: I’ve genuinely enjoyed Overeem’s recent run. It makes heavyweight look… good? Like a place worth paying some measure of attention to beyond gently chuckling as two sweaty behemoths blunder together and one falls over, and then sighing as you realize you have to rationalize it.

I’m not sure I buy a huge amount of Overeem’s character redemption at Jackson-Wink. I bet he’s still a smug asshole, but I don’t care. In a heavyweight world where the metaphorical rock-paper-scissors is dominated by people shouting “rock? ROOOCKKK?!?” and then smashing them together as hard as humanly possible, it’s been a pleasure to see someone utilizing all the options at his disposal

David: To be honest, heavyweight narratives are starting to become downright dizzying. Overeem was a pretender turned contender, turned pretender again, turned contender now potential champion. Somewhere in there his K-1 status made him a god, but that’s another story. Horse meat or not, Overeem has reached what finally feels like the pinnacle in his career. It feels like only yesterday we were talking about this LHW’s potential if he could only fight past three minutes. Wait, no…it feels exactly like forever. Kudos, Alistair.

What’s at stake?

Phil: Stipe defending the belt on home turf? Thinking about it, though, “home turf” has often been a pathway for the MMA gods to generate particularly awful losses recently. Werdum in Brazil, Cain in Mexico City, Gus in Sweden.

Overeem has the chance to do what Alvarez did, and add the UFC belt to what is already a pretty impressive collection.

David: The main thing at stake here is heavyweight status. A win for either man makes heavyweight just a little more interesting, as …

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