UFC Jacksonville Prediction – Alistair Overeem vs. Walt Harris
Rounding off a busy week in the return to the UFC schedule will be a card headlined by a heavyweight clash between Alistair Overeem and returning contender Walt Harris. Having been initially booked to headline the Washington D.C. card in December 2019, the fight was cancelled due to the disappearance of Harris’ stepdaughter. Harris was replaced by Jairzinho Rozenstruik, who staged one of the comebacks of the year after being comfortably out-grappled over 25 minutes to KO Overeem with 4 seconds left in the fight.
Determined to propel himself back into heavyweight contention, Harris is returning after the horrific kidnapping of his stepdaughter, Aniah Blanchard. Harris is coming off of quick knock out wins over Aleksei Oleinik and Sergey Spivak and stylistically thinks he poses Overeem a lot of problems. On the other hand, Overeem has looked to be remoulding his game after losing to Curtis Blaydes – moving over to Blaydes’ gym Elevation Fight Team and utilising more of his grappling in recent fights. Following first-round wins over Sergei Pavlovich and the aforementioned Aleksei Oleinik, Overeem will be looking to bounce back from his KO loss to Rozenstruik in December last year. For this fight, however, it looks like Overeem has spent his fight camp in the Netherlands.
Since his move to Elevation Fight Team, Alistair Overeem has overhauled his fighting style, having previously spent long periods of fights playing a counter game from a southpaw stance. However, after his loss to Blaydes, he’s adopted a more aggressive offense, looking to engage in the clinch positions where he can start to work his grappling. Overeem’s offensive wrestling in open space is nothing special but he does a good job of working the outside trip in clinch positions in order to get his opponent to the mat. Although he hasn’t had a submission win since 2009, he still has that threat for his opponents to be aware of, having an especially dangerous guillotine choke which has contributed to 8 of his career submissions. However, being a prolific striker Overeem poses more threat from ground and pound in the top position, recently finishing Sergei Pavlovich shortly after getting the fight to the mat.
Harris, on the other hand, relies mainly on his athleticism and solid takedown defence (76%) to keep the fight standing. Furthermore, Harris does a good job of disengaging his hips and looking for underhooks in the clinch to advance to a better position or disengage entirely. Although he does have the ability to offensively wrestle well (he took down Andrei Arlovski twice in their bout), I wouldn’t expect him to encourage the grappling exchanges in his upcoming bout against Overeem.
On the feet, Harris works from a southpaw stance and has very fast hands for a heavyweight. With power in his left hand, he tends to favour a lead right hook to set up his power left and mixes things up well with body shots. At range, Harris pressures his opponents towards the fence, where he does a good job of cutting off the cage and applying feints to work his way into range. Coupled with his feints, Harris often effectively fights his opponents’ lead hand to disrupt their momentum and safely enter range – this might not be as effective against Overeem however if he also chooses to fight from Southpaw, as he did against Jairzinho Rozenstruik.
Overeem tends to switch stances to adapt to different fight situations. When fighting at range, Overeem fights from southpaw which allows him to use his powerful left body kick. In contrast, Overeem tends to fight from orthodox when he’s looking to pressure his opponents towards the fence and utilise his grappling and dangerous clinch game. In his recent fight with Aleksei Oleinik, he almost only attacked with knees from a double collar tie position and also knocked out Mark Hunt with the same strategy. Also, he effectively throws knees from unorthodox angles, often coming around the guard as well as more commonly through the middle.
Although Overeem has been on a bit of a resurgence excluding the outcome of his most recent fight with Rozenstruik, I tend to think he is declining – struggling to compete with the guys towards the top of the division. He does have paths to victory in this fight but I think that largely depends on whether he can get his grappling going against a powerful athlete with generally solid takedown defence. On the feet, Harris packs a lot of power and we have seen Overeem knocked out several times in recent years.
Harris is making a step up from his recent competition but he has dealt with the quality of opponents he’s faced in the way that he should have. The fight will most probably spend prolonged periods on the feet and Harris has the power to hurt Overeem, combined with the athleticism to avoid the areas where I deem Overeem to pose him the most threats.
Prediction:
Harris by KO/TKO round 2
(Please note: This prediction is not associated with the MMAPlay365 handicapper, packages, subscriptions, services or hub)