Overeem’s not doing Strikeforce any favours

Alistair Overeem is quickly becoming a joke and he’s turning Strikeforce into the punchline. He has never defended the Strikeforce heavyweight title he won 23 months ago, yet he finds time to goof around with the likes of tomato can Tony Sylvester at this weekend’s tenth-anniversary Golden Glory card, Ultimate Glory, in Holland.

I don’t care that the Dutchman has fought three times in K-1 kickboxing and three times in DREAM since he won the belt, or that he’s scheduled to fight once more in each promotion before the end of the year. I care that he hasn’t proven himself to be the Strikeforce champion by defending the title. I care that Strikeforce doesn’t seem to care if Overeem ever defends his belt (especially now that they have Fedor Emelianenko). In fact, Strikeforce doesn’t seem to care if any of their champs defend their titles. Cung Le held the middleweight belt for 18 months without a defense before he finally relinquished it completely so he could devote himself to acting. That would never happen in the UFC. (You can be sure that if Quinton “Rampage” Jackson had held a UFC title when he decided to go off to Hollywood that he’d have been stripped of it immediately and the top two contenders would face off to replace him atop the division.)

Strikeforce needs to put belts on the line to be taken seriously. It needs a roster of fighters in each weight class who can be ranked so that fans can understand the importance of non-title fights to the overall picture. Right now, the fights appear random, like names drawn from a hat, and random-seeming fights don’t hold a lot of interest to most MMA fans.