« Is UFC Heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez the fighter of the year for 2010? | Home | What it was like meeting Fedor in his locker room after he lost to Werdum »
Alistair Overeem wins 2010 Nikkan Sports MVP award
By Zach Arnold | December 22, 2010
Background information: Every year, Tokyo Sports (and other media outlets they work with) give out yearly pro-wrestling awards. With the rise of MMA, they also gave out awards to those who did the cross-over between the two (think: Bob Sapp). Nikkan Sports, one of the major sports daily papers in Japan, created their own awards several years ago but separated wrestling and fight (K-1/MMA) categories in their award choices. The difference in the voting process is that the media votes in the Tokyo Sports awards and the fans vote for the Nikkan awards.
“Konnichiwa. My name is Alistair Overeem. It’s been a really hard year but a successful year. I participated in the K-1 GP and won a championship title. So I’m very proud of that. It was hard fights. I’ve worked and trained really hard with myself and the team, but it paid off and we became champion after three hard fights on December 11th and I’m the most happiest man on the planet right now. Very proud, very happy to bring the gold (belt) back home. I have no injuries, so me and the team decided to stay in Tokyo to do television appearances and PR. So we are now in Tokyo doing that and because I have no injuries, I will participate in the Dynamite show December 31 so I look forward to showing my Japanese fans great fights, a lot more knockouts, and come to the Dynamite show. Mitene!
“Dear fans, I would like to thank all of you who voted for me to receive the [Nikkan Sports] award 2010. Domo arigato.”
Topics: DREAM, Japan, K-1, Media, MMA, Zach Arnold | 2 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
For Japanese MMA? Why not? It was either him or Shinya Aoki.
Nice to see The Reem getting the recognition he deserves. It really was a huge year for him. Can’t wait to see what he does in 2011 (praying for a fight with Fedor).