GLORY Kickboxing has booked a massive heavyweight showdown with Rico Verhoeven vs. Alistair Overeem. This fight is tapped to take place on October 23, 2021, in Arnhem, Netherlands. It will be a bout under kickboxing rules.
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Rico Verhoeven vs. Alistair Overeem in GLORY
Rico Verhoeven
Rico Verhoeven is the current GLORY kickboxing heavyweight world champion with nine successful title defenses. He also won the 2021 and 2014 GLORY heavyweight tournaments. He is a full-sized Dutch-born fighter at 1.96 m (6 ft 5 in) in height and 119.6 kg (264 lb) in weight, with 77 in (196 cm) reach. Overeem will have his hands full in Rico Verhoeven vs. Alistair Overeem, in which the heavyweight championship will be on the line.
Verhoeven has defeated other heavyweight kickboxing greats such as Hesdy Gerges, Badr Hari, Daniel Ghiță, Peter Aerts, Gökhan Saki, Errol Zimmerman, and others. He has a record of 58-10 in professional kickboxing.
“I want to congratulate Alistair on getting the fight,” Verhoeven said on The MMA Hour. “I think this is the fight everybody wants but not everybody gets. I think it’s a huge deal for him but for me, it’s just another day at the office, so it’s gonna be fun.”
GLORY: “Collision 3″ Rico Verhoeven vs. Alistair Overeem will see two fellow Dutch giants facing off in the Netherlands at the 34,000-seat GelreDome.
Alistair Overeem
Overeem stands 6 ft 4 in (193 cm) in height and 256 lb (116 kg) in weight with an 80 in (203 cm) reach. He has been active in MMA since 1999 and has a 47-19 record. He has all over the globe including the UFC, PRIDE FC, Strikeforce, DREAM, M-1, RINGS, and others. Overeem held heavyweight titles in DREAM and Strikeforce.
The Dutch Overeem fought a huge list of incredible MMA fighters such as Fabrício Werdum, Francis Ngannou, Mark Hunt, Stipe Miocic, Andrei Arlovski, Junior dos Santos, Frank Mir, Chuck Liddell, Antônio Rogério Nogueira, Vitor Belfort, Igor Vovchanchyn, Maurício “Shogun” Rua, Sergei Kharitonov, Mirko Cro Cop, Brock Lesnar, amongst others.
In addition to Overeem’s MMA success, he has found great moments in K-1 Kickboxing as well. Overeem was the 2010 K-1 World Grand Prix champion and has wins over greats such as Peter Aerts, Tyrone Spong, Gokhan Saki, Ewerton Teixeira, and Badr Hari. He has a kickboxing record of 10-4. But Overeem has not competed in Kickboxing since 2010 and he will be taking no warm-up fights ahead of the title bout against Verhoeven.
“If it’s up to me, I would immediately gun for gold, right?” Overeem said to Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour, “I would immediately go for the title. That’s me. So that would be Rico. We had a little bit of back & forth, scuffling, so that’s something I’d be looking for.”
Alistair Overeem has been an active MMA fighter since he was 19 years old and is now 41. His last fight was a TKO loss in February 2021 against Alexander Volkov. He was also a name mentioned to potentially fight the MMA great Fedor Emelianenko in Bellator later this year.
Tickets will soon be on sale for GLORY: “Collision 3” Rico Verhoeven vs Alistair Overeem in Arnhem, the Netherlands at the 34,000-seat GelreDome for October 23. This GLORY Kickboxing event will be available on Pay-Per-View on streaming platform GLORYFights.com. No other fights have yet been confirmed for this event.
Rico Verhoeven also said that Alistair Overeem is “a name that I’d like to have on the list.” Telling Helwani he’s impressed with Overeem’s ambition, “that’s the fighter mentality and the fighter heart that he has. And he’s been fighting for so long. For my part, I think he knows what he’s getting into.”
Alistair Overeem adds, “For me, it would be awesome to finish my career where it started which is here in the Netherlands.”
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Featured Image
Image courtesy of Glory kickboxing official Twitter.
