The first, only, and current Strikeforce heavyweight champion Alistair ‘Demolition Man’ Overeem (32-11-0) will return to action after more than a two year absence from the cage of his current employer as the fighter announced in an exclusive interview with MMAJunkie.com that he has signed to fight top ranked heavyweight Brett ‘The Grim’ Rogers (10-1-0) as the main event of a May 15 Strikeforce event yet to be named.

Unfortunately for Rogers the heavyweight strap will not be on the line as ‘The Grim’ last lost an epic battle with Fedor ‘The Last Emperor’ Emelianenko (32-1-0) back in November and is apparently ineligible to compete for the title. Just to be clear, this means that should Rogers defeat the current heavyweight champion he will not then become champion but would instead be forced to rematch Overeem and have to beat him consecutively to officially earn the belt which borders on unbelievable. From this writer’s perspective the last thing the sport of mixed martial arts needs is its top athletes setting a precedent of making diva demands in their contracts, in this case essentially saying ‘we can fight, as long as it doesn’t really count’.

Were Strikeforce truly interested in naming a true champion they would scrap this bout altogether and put Fedor in against Overeem as he is without question the top heavyweight contender who also happened to put Rogers out cold on the canvas just four months ago. Especially now that Emelianenko’s expected bout with Fabricio Werdum has been pushed back indefinitely there really is no excuse to further delay the promotion’s top two heavyweights from finally settling their score. Overeem claims that M1-Global, of which Emelianenko is a part owner, did not want the fight to happen this soon and apparently has a significant amount of pull within the Strikefroce organization – or at least enough to screw Brett Rogers out of what’s right.

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