Antonio Silva pulled off a huge upset win tonight over Alistair Overeem, handing him a brutal third round beatdown to claim the TKO victory.
The two men clinch up against the cage early in the first and Overeem fires off a knee before they reset.
Overeem fires a few punches and goes back into the clinch against the cage. Not much happening and they break free with Silva winging a punch on the way out. Overeem’s keen to clinch again and works a few short knees from the position again, but with not a whole lot happening they separate again.
Silva’s been tentative so far but he finally steps forward with a couple of punches followed by a head kick, but it’s an air shot. Overeem’s abandoning his usual solid defensive guard here tonight, holding his hands lower and that’s surprising as his chin has been proven to be fragile in the past.
Overeem lands a nice punch and follows up with a solid knee to the mid-section, the best strikes of the fight so far.
Silva lands a decent leg kick and Overeem heads back into the clinch. Half a minute to go and they go back to striking range with Overeem landing an uppercut. Clinch work again to end the round and Overeem scores a knee to the body.
They start to strike at the start of the second round and then comes the clinch, but this time Overeem is able to throw Silva to the mat.
Silva lands a few nice elbows from his back and Overeem postures up and lands a heavy blow to his opponents body before falling into his guard and landing a few more heavy body shots.
Overeem backs out of the guard, but then opts to fall back into it and postures up for another big body shot.
Not a great deal happening, though with a minute to go Overeem does land a nice series of strikes that keeps the referee from standing them back up for now, though with thirty seconds to go that’s exactly what happens.
As they get back into striking range it’s Silva who finally has some success, landing a punch and then getting the muay thai clinch which enables him to bang a knee up to Overeem’s head which causes causes to step back.
Onto the third round and Silva has more confidence now after that finally flurry in the previous round. He goes straight to war with Overeem and immediately has success, landing a few punches and then following up with a head kick that rocks his opponent.
Silva continues with a barrage of strikes and Overeem’s in real trouble as he gets backed up against the cage. Huge uppercuts follow and then thunderous left and rights. It seems as if only the cage is keeping Overeem upright until a final few blows send him apparently unconscious to the canvas bringing an end to the fight.
It looks like a clean knockout to me, but it’s declared a TKO victory for Antonio Silva with 0.25mins of the second round gone.
Great work from Silva to make Overeem pay for what looked like a lack of respect for his opponents offensive game throughout this fight.
He’s now thrown a spanner in the works as far as the UFC’s title plans at heavyweight go – not the first time the Brazilian has done so, having also dashing Strikeforce’s hopes when he stopped Fedor Emelianenko in the quarter-finals of the Strikeforce heavyweight GP a couple of years ago.
