Overeem: I said go ahead and cut me
“There were some contract negotiations for an extension in Strikeforce, and basically what happened was there were a lot of…
“There were some contract negotiations for an extension in Strikeforce, and basically what happened was there were a lot of terms in there which we couldn’t live with,” Overeem said on Friday’s new edition of “Inside MMA” on HDNet. “One was fighting exclusively for Strikeforce. Basically that would mean I’d have to let K-1 go, DREAM go, and even the possibility of fighting for the UFC. I’m always a guy looking up and looking further. The UFC is where the top guys are, so that’s my ultimate goal, to become the UFC champion.
“But basically they wanted to keep me in Strikeforce.”
“Basically, there were some threats from the side of Strikeforce. ‘If you’re not going to compete [on] Sept. 10, we’re going to cut you from the tournament. Then the communication harshened a little bit. ‘If you don’t compete in the tournament, you’re going to be cut from Strikeforce entirely.’ That was really like a threat. I was like, ‘Go ahead and cut me then.’
“They didn’t ask me for any medical evidence or anything. I don’t know what they were thinking.”
With the UFC and Strikeforce now falling under the same ownership group, he’s not sure who exactly is calling the shots.
“It’s unclear where their priorities are and if it’s one entity or two. I don’t exactly know if that’s the case, but from what I understand, they wanted to keep me in Strikeforce to build the Strikeforce brand. But for me, I want to go where the top guys are, and that’s the UFC.”