Alistair Overeem was in bad shape just before UFC 209.
While “The Reem” certainly didn’t look off during his bout against Mark Hunt this past Saturday night (March 4), the fight was actually in jeopardy. Overeem didn’t talk about it at the press conference at first, but Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) President Dana White was more than happy to tell the media of Overeem’s resilience.
The issue was food poisoning. With Khabib Nurmagomedov already out of his bout with Tony Ferguson, losing Overeem on the card wouldn’t have been ideal to say the least. Nevertheless, Overeem recovered and knocked out Hunt in the third round.
Speaking to Ariel Helwani on MMAFighting.com‘s “The MMA Hour,” Overeem said he followed the correct procedures which allowed him to use an IV given the situation:
“I was dizzy in the head, I was nauseous, extremely low energy. I had a hard time coming out of the bed. I didn’t want to come out of the bed. Yeah it was pretty bad. I was messed up. It kind of got worse during the day. Then it got really bad. We checked everything with USADA before. Listen, we don’t want to get in any trouble. We’ve had our troubles, we learned from it. We’re not gonna go in that direction any time again. We really did our homework. When I woke up I was kind of better, but not really. Still low energy. So again, hospital and IV. That was fight day.”
