Alistair Overeem knows Conor McGregor is raking it in but he is not having all these zeroes dropped without asking questions.
The heavyweight fighter will take on UFC champion Stipe Miocic at UFC 203 in Cleveland on September 10 and could propel himself into a top earning division with his 42nd career win [UFC record 6-3].
During a media lunch in Los Angeles, the Dutchman, who was born in Liverpool, stressed he is ready to dethrone Miocic and reign supreme in the UFC.
While becoming UFC champion could change his life and boost his profile, Overeem insists the game comes ahead of the cash. Asked about the reported earnings of Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather, he suggested there was no class in flashing stacks of cash and boasting about bank balances.
Some serious money, here… https://t.co/J6ybTg8BJJ
— FootballJOE (@FootballJOE) August 27, 2016
Indeed, Overeem has a novel suggestion for ‘Money’ and ‘The Notorious’, telling MMA Fighting:
“My answer to that, to Mayweather and to Conor, let me see some bank statements.
“You can talk, you can say it, you can put it out there in tweets, but let me see a bank statement that says UFC wired X amount of money, because it’s always going to be this way. People lie. It’s the 21st century. Social media is fake…
“People lie all the time. Personally, I have a hard time believing both of them about their income.”
Overeem is one of those fighters who likes to do his talking in the octagon. He believes Mayweather and McGregor are “copycatting” Muhammad Ali. “I’m just being me,” he added.
As for the pictures and videos of fast cars, mansions, glitzy parties and tailored suits, Overeem is unsurprisingly unimpressed:
“In Holland, we like to dress up, we like to do our thing, we like to be cool. But we what we don’t like is to have stacks of cash on the table and the cars. To us, in our culture… that’s just attracting problems, attracting difficulty.”
Mo’ money, mo’ problems. As long as McGregor is getting paid, he’ll live with all that comes with it.
Read more
