After 67 professional fights and 47 victories, legendary heavyweight Alistair Overeem appears to have called time on his career.
The 41-year-old fighter, who has competed for the UFC, PRIDE, Strikeforce and others in a career which saw him claim several world titles, posted a video to his official Instagram page which shows the Dutchman taking off a pair of UFC gloves and placing them on the ground in front of him — a time honoured method of announcing a retirement from combat sports.
Overeem captions the video with an ellipses and did not make any further comment, though it appears likely given the nature of the post and the replies to it that the former K-1 world champion has fought his last fight.
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Should the news be confirmed, Overeem will retire from the sport on the back of four wins from his last six fights. He came up short in his last fight in which he lost by second round TKO to Russia’s Alexander Volkov but prior to that he earned successive finishes against Augusto Sakai and Walt Harris.
His UFC career saw him debut in the organisation against Brock Lesnar who he defeated by first-round TKO. A run of four wins early in his tenure with the organisation saw him awarded a title bout against then-champ Stipe Miocic in 2016 but he was defeated by first-round KO — but claimed afterwards that he felt Miocic tap to a guillotine choke, but video evidence didn’t confirm this.
Despite being unable to capture UFC gold in his decade-long stint with the UFC, Overeem will be remembered as one of the premier heavyweight fighters of his generation.
