Andrei Arlovski and Alistair Overeem are teammates at Jacksons MMA gym in Alberquerque, New Mexico, but nonetheless the two have been booked to fight at UFC Fight Night 87, and it seems that there’s not too much brotherly love between them.
“Overeem is in my f***ing way and I will do everything possible to smash him and that’s it. Period,” Alrovski stated emphatically in a new interview with MMAfighting.com.
It’s unusual to here that kind of talk when a fighter is going up against a teammate, but it seems that Arlovski is fired up after learning that Overeem actually asked to fight him.
“Overeem called Joe Silva and begged him over and over to fight me in his hometown,” Overeem reveals. “The UFC called me, called my manager and told me that Overeem wanted to fight me on the Rotterdam card. I said, ‘f**k, no problem.'”
Adding to the awkwardness, team coach Greg Jackson has confirmed that he’ll be breaking his tradition of not picking sides when teammates fight, and instead will be in Arlovski’s corner on fight night.
Another key component of the Jacksons MMA coaching staff, Mike Winkeljohn will also be focused on Arlovski’s preparation for this clash of the heavyweights, and one man who’s completely comfortable with that potential rift in the team dynamic is ‘The Pitbull’.
“It is a little weird, but for me, it isn’t weird because I don’t give a f**k. He won’t have coach Winkeljohn or Greg Jackson as the coaches so it is no help to him so I am fine with that.”
Arlovski has been at Jacksons MMA for considerably longer than Arlovski, during an upsurge in his career that’s seen him rise back to prominence in the UFC, and he’s adamant that he’s not going to change anything about his usual fight preparations at the camp in order to accomodate Overeem.
“I’m training on my schedule. If I have to be there in the morning, I will be there in the morning. If I have to be there at night, I will be there at night. If I have to be there all f***ing day, I will be there all f***ing day. I’m number one priority for the team and that’s it. Period.”
So it sounds like there’s going to be plenty of heat heading into this fight between Arlovski and Overeem which is scheduled to be the main event of the UFC Fight Night 87 event in Rotterdam, Holland on May 8th.
