Readying the Encore

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When Fabricio Werdum next sets foot inside the cage, nearly a year will have passed since he became the first man in a decade to defeat Fedor Emelianenko. The challenge ahead of him appears no less daunting.

Werdum will meet Strikeforce heavyweight champion, Dream heavyweight titleholder and 2010 K-1 World Grand Prix winner Alistair Overeem in the Strikeforce “Overeem vs. Werdum” headliner on Saturday at the American Airlines Center in Dallas. A rematch of their 2006 encounter, it will serve as one of the two remaining quarterfinals in the Strikeforce heavyweight grand prix; Josh Barnett and Brett Rogers will square off in the other.

Unbeaten in his last 10 outings, Overeem has emerged as one of the sport’s most feared heavyweights. The 31-year-old Golden Glory representative has stopped six straight opponents, five of them in less than two minutes. A staggering 33 of his 34 career victories have resulted in finishes. They call him the “Demolition Man” for a reason.

None of it seems to faze Werdum. The 33-year-old Brazilian has pieced together a three-fight winning streak since his knockout loss to Junior dos Santos at UFC 90.

Werdum has history on his side. He submitted Overeem with a second-round kimura under the Pride Fighting Championships banner five years ago. Motivation will not be an issue. Even after dethroning the incomparable Emelianenko, Werdum feels as though he has plenty to prove to the mixed martial arts community, especially against a striker and kickboxer of Overeem’s caliber. Training out of Kings MMA in California, he believes he has what it takes to turn away the surging Dutchman once more.

“Training camp went amazingly [well] and had an impressive energy about it,” says Werdum, a two-time Abu Dhabi Combat Club Submission Wrestling World Championships gold medalist. “The camp I had before I fought Fedor was also great, but this time, I feel it went even better, especially with everything that happened after my win.”

Werdum, who submitted Emelianenko with a first-round triangle choke last June, holds black belts in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, judo and muay Thai. Operated by former Chute Boxe Academy trainer Rafael Cordeiro, the Kings MMA gym where Werdum is based has grown in both prominence in quality. His training partners now include onetime UFC light heavyweight champion Mauricio “Shogun” Rua, former Pride middleweight titleholder Wanderlei Silva and current UFC middleweight contender Mark Munoz.

“I think it’s all in my favor, and I’ll give the crowd a real show,” says Werdum, who has delivered eight of his 14 professional wins by submission. “Don’t doubt it, and don’t miss the fight.”

Silva, who will face Chris Leben at UFC 132 in July, turned to Twitter to answer those who doubt Werdum’s progress under Cordeiro, the man who awarded the 6-foot-4, 238-pound Brazilian his black belt in muay Thai.

“I went home quietly today,” Silva wrote. “I checked in [at] Kings MMA and saw a big guy, looked at him, he looked at me, and I said: ‘What are you looking at, bro?’ I thought: ‘He is big, but he’s not two [men]’ and called him for a sparring session. I started well, but suddenly ... everything got black, [there] was blood [all] over the walls. Oh, that big guy was Fabricio Werdum. The man is keen, [and he is] training really hard.”

The Werdum resume speaks for itself. His list of victims includes former UFC heavyweight title contender Gabriel Gonzaga (twice), 2003 ADCC winner John Olav Einemo, fellow Pride veteran Aleksander Emelianenko and the world-ranked Antonio Silva. Dos Santos, now one of the world’s premier heavyweights, remains the only man to finish him.

Werdum laughed at “The Axe Murderer’s” description of his sparring exploits and preferred not to discuss them further. Instead, he chose to highlight the philosophy present at Kings MMA.

“We spar really hard every time, and anything can happen in moments like those,” Werdum says. “One day, [Renato] ‘Babalu’ [Sobral] told me, ‘You don’t comment on training,’ and I never do. Wanderlei did, but it’s OK. It was a normal situation, nothing special.”

Cordeiro is the man in which Werdum has placed his trust.

“Rafael always asks us to give 100 percent of our energy on the sparring sessions, to make it feel like a fight,” he says. “We’re friends and we joke with each other, but training is serious. If we don’t make it serious, we don’t help each other.”