Technical and Tactical Analysis of Alistair Overeem vs. Jairzinho Rozenstruik
A important heavyweight fight leads UFC’s Saturday event in Washington, D.C., between former title challenger Alistair Overeem and newcomer Jairzinho Rozenstruik.
Jairzinho has a great opportunity to enter the UFC heavyweight elite, while Alistair Overeem may once again establish himself as a major contender for the division, but at the risk of falling from a important position in the ranking.
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Technical Analysis
Alistair Overeem
K-1 World Grand Prix Champion, Alistair Overeem has the striking as his main weapon, but his 17 submission wins show that, unlike most heavyweights, he is not a one-dimensional fighter.
Overeem usually fights from medium to long distance. Being aware of his low ability to absorb strikes, it is impracticable, even when it may be technically favorable, to keep the fight at close range and risk to take the hardest strikes from the heaviest fighters in the sport.
The guard is usually relatively low and a short and modestly questionable head movement is used. This defensive deficiency is compensated by maintaining distance. Overeem does not have much difficulty controlling the spaces of the fight and usually maintains a comfortable distance from opponents, retreating with one or more steps whenever necessary.
The guard has two variations depending on the opponent. When facing strikers such as Junior dos Santos and Mark Hunt, the guard is slightly higher, and when facing grapplers such as Fabrício Werdum and Curtis Blaydes, the guard is totally down.
He practically forgets to protect his head with his hands and arms when facing a grappler, which can be very dangerous in a weight division where any strike has a real chance of ending the fight. This may sound tactically mistaken, but no grappler knocked him out on the feet in more than 60 pro fights.
A very serious downside in Overeem’s game is the defensive response he has when an opponent shortens the distance and begins a sequence of heavy strikes, cornering him on the fence. When this happens, Overeem protects himself like a kickboxer by crouching and covering his face with his hands, but without the big gloves to offer good protection. He presented this against opponents who are considerably inferior to him in the exchange, such as Andrei Arlovski and Andrei Pavlovich.
Overeem has a low hit volume, but its accuracy is quite high, and that’s something that I consider a great quality. If we look at the combat sports that hold the best changers in the world, like boxing, we can see that the number of connected hits is low. This is a reflection of two factors, the first is that fighters have a good defensive system and the second is that they choose their moves well.
Contrary to what we’ve seen a lot with Wanderlei Silva and Diego Sanchez, two of the most aggressive fighters in MMA history, the best boxers in the world connect few (but good) strikes. Last Saturday, Deontay Wilder, one of history’s greatest knockout artists, faced Luis Ortiz for the WBC heavyweight title. In the course of 4 rounds, both Wilder and Ortiz had not yet passed 15 connected hits in the fight. When facing Keith Jardine, Wanderlei connected 11 strikes in 36 seconds. This is because Wanderlei Silva does not have Wilder’s technical level and fight IQ to choose the moves and Keith Jardine has not 0.1% of the quality of Luis Ortiz’s defensive system.
Overeem’s offensive arsenal is broad and consists of good jabs, straights, hooks, uppercuts and overhands, plus good kicks at all levels. Since the technical level of the division is low, Overeem can afford to strike from long range, sharply shortening the distance and delivering a heavy strike without being caught in a counter. Again, it is not tactically ideal, but no one has surpassed it in this regard.
Despite the great change, what impresses me most about Overeem is the clinch game. He can adapt the control and strikes from kickboxing and especially muay thai very well, being able to maintain position for a long time and applying knees to body with a volume much above average for any weight division.
When the opponent is unable to protect himself well in this area, he is doomed to been knocked out, as happened with Mark Hunt and Alexey Oleynik, who should have headaches even today after facing the Dutchman’s knees.
Despite not having a background in wrestling, Overeem has a good takedown defense and can keep the fight standing against virtually all UFC fighters, with a few exceptions. At the UFC, the only fighter who managed to take him down more than once was Curtis Blaydes, the second best wrestler in the division (behind only the former champion Daniel Cormier).
On the ground, Overeem has a technical level higher than enough for a fighter who focuses on standing fighting. He has good positional control, can pass the guard and has a very interesting arsenal of submissions.
Defensively, Overeem can usually escape when he rarely falls under, unless the fighter has great positional control and very constant pressure, like Curtis Blaydes, or gets a knockout on the ground n’ pound, like champion Stipe Miocic.
Jairzinho Rozenstruik
Jairzinho is the classic heavyweight who fights for a single shot, which is enough to knock any human being unconscious.
He often fights from the middle range, where he can both attack without advancing much, such as when he knocked out Junior Albini, and shred his opponents’ strikes with counterattacks, such as when he knocked out Andrei Aslovski and Allen Crowder.
Jairzinho only comes forward vehemently when he sees an opportunity as a hurt opponent, changing his stance to a more aggressive fighter who puts pressure and leaves few spaces. It is hard to tell if he has the conditioning to do this for three rounds, but if he had or knew how to better dose his energy, this would be a much more interesting strategy for him to adopt in his fights, because when he is standing in the middle distance (because once another adversary will inevitably survive his shots) eventually swallowing hard and unnecessary blows that would be difficult to receive if you were putting more pressure and controlling the center of the octagon.
Rozenstruik’s offensive arsenal is not that vast, consisting of simple variations of punches, mostly straights and overhands, and having the left hook almost as his only counter-attack option.
His defensive system is quite flawed. Against punches, he relies entirely on the guard to protect himself, and if the reflex is not to defend in the right place, he is likely to need to absorb the strike. Against kicks the defense is practically nil, only cringing by pure reflex, this was exposed by Junior Albini, who is far from being a good striker.
In the grappling game, Jairzinho demonstrated a very basic notion. Junior Albini, who is superior in the ground as a brown belt in brazilian jiu-jitsu, had no trouble controlling the clinch fight on the grid and managed two takedowns in less than six minutes of fighting.
Jairzinho’s two major problems, offensive and defensively, is the near absence of footwork and head movement. If he worked those basic fundamentals of the striking a little harder, he could become a much better and dangerous fighter, reducing the risks and increasing his chances of victory.
Jairzinho is young for the division and still has little experience, there is a natural tendency for him to evolve over time, but if this evolution does not include aspects that go beyond punching and kicking, such as footwork, head movement, octagon control and fight IQ, it can never fail to be the classic heavyweight with very high knockout power and low technical level.
Tactical Analysis
Overeem will most likely adopt a strategy with elements he used against Andrei Arlovski, Mark Hunt and Francis Ngannou, trying to keep the fight from medium to long range, avoid blunt exchange and seek clinch, especially on the fence, to work the knees and tire Rozenstruik’s arms, and may even make variations such as taking the fight to the ground where there is the greatest technical level disparity in the fight.
This is a heavyweight fight and it can end at any time. Two very important factors significantly increase Rozenstruik’s chances: the Surinamese has a much higher than average knockout power and Overeem reacts very badly to his opponents’ strong shots.
If Jairzinho adopts a clever strategy, putting pressure, avoiding the clinch and not allowing Overeem to roam around in the octagon, he can corner the Dutchman and be able to deliver some good strikes. If successfully applied a few times during the fight, the chances of Jairzinho connecting the one shot needed to stun or knock out are considerable.
If a good strategy is not applied by Jairzinho, there is still a risk that Overeem will adopt a mistaken strategy, as he did against Francis Ngannou, underestimate his opponent, as he did against Antonio Bigfoot, or neglect defensively, as he did against Travis Browne. Examples of Missing Overeem abound, but you can’t count on that either, after all, he doesn’t have 8 wins in the last 11 fights competing at the highest level.
Overeem must adopt a decently clever strategy, making sure to keep the fight from medium to long range, moving around a lot and not letting him be cornered near the fence, looking for loopholes to shorten the distance and fetch the clinch or take down.
At the technical level, Overeem’s advantage lies in all sectors of the fight. Jairzinho’s only advantage is his knockout power, but his chances increase thanks to the poor defensive stance Overeem adopts when in danger or receiving a sequence of hard punches.
The most likely scenario is that Overeem will be able to control much of the action, both in exchange and grappling, either in the clinch or on the ground, and thus can find some knockout gap (or even submission if Jairzinho exposes himself). I would say an Overeem win represents 60% of the chances.
The second most likely scenario is a knockout of Jairzinho, either on his own merit, finding a good opportunity as he did against Andrei Arlovski, or by Overeem’s flaws, which is not an example of consistency. This scenario represents the other 40%.
Pick: Alistair Overeem wins by knockout.
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