Following a unanimous decision victory over Fabricio Werdum in their opening round bout of the Strikeforce Heavyweight Grand Prix, Alistair Overeem was not impressed with the outcome and criticized Werdum for not wanting to stand and trade punches.

Werdum attempted to keep the fight in his domain on the canvas, at times taunting Overeem with come to the mat but to no avail and Overeem shared his thoughts on it at the post fight press conference:

"Considering that Fabricio is the best grappler in MMA, the game plan was to not go into his game. I consider myself, with the K-1 title, the best striker in MMA, so I wanted to keep it standing. He made so many takedown attempts. It was a little frustrating to me, because I couldn't finish him in that first [round], and I also couldn't deliver the fight that I wanted to deliver to the fans."

"We worked a lot on my cardio. I wasn't worried about that," said Overeem. "He just did not want to stand and bang with me, and I expected that. He had a lot of words before the fight, so it's a pity. My apologies to the fans."