Alistair Overeem suffered one of the most devastating knockouts in UFC heavyweight history last night after Francis Ngannou attempted to send his head into orbit with a thunderous uppercut.
Overeem was left unconscious for a significant period of time afterwards, but eventually came too, and a few hours later the 37-year-old took to social media to assure his fans he was ok.
“No damage and all healthy thankfully.. unfortunately lost today,” Overeem wrote on Twitter. “Props to @francis_ngannou, I got hit with a uppercut from he**, one of his specialities which we knew were very dangerous.
“Some chill time now before back to the drawing-board.”
Overeem’s definition of “healthy” likely differs from your average human being, and that does lead to the question as to how much longer the Dutch star can continue on like this as over the course of his 18-year combat sports career he’s been T/KO’d over a dozen times.
That includes being clean KO’d by some of the heaviest hitters in the sport, including Stipe Miocic, Antonio Silva, Sergei Kharatanov, Mauricio ‘Shogun’ Rua, Chuck Liddell and now Francis Ngannou.
However, having defeated former champion Fabricio Werdum and Mark Hunt earlier in 2017 and been on the verge of title contention, it doesn’t seem as if even this latest brutal KO will be enough to convince him that he should contemplate hanging up his gloves for the sake of his long-term health.