This is bad news for Strikeforce: K-1 announced today that Alistair Overeem, the reigning Strikeforce heavyweight champion, will participate in the 2009 World Grand Prix Final 16.

Overeem will take on Peter Aerts on the September 26 Final 16 card. If he beats Aerts, he’ll return to K-1 in December to participate in the Grand Prix Final.

For those keeping score, Overeem’s last fight for Strikeforce was in November of 2007, when he beat Paul Buentello to win the belt. Since that fight, Overeem has fought exclusively for DREAM and K-1, never once defending the belt. He was scheduled to defend the championship against Fabricio Werdum on the “Carano vs. Cyborg” card, but pulled out of the fight due to a hand injury sustained in a bar fight.

With his K-1 commitments already in place, it appears that Overeem’s first championship defense won’t happen until sometime in 2010 — over two years since he won it in the first place.

We’ve reached the point where Scott Coker probably needs to strip Overeem of the belt. Alistair could be excused for not defending the title when the Strikeforce heavyweight division consisted solely of he and Paul Buentello. Right now, though, we’re looking at a division that has several worthy challengers for the belt, including Fedor Emelianenko (who realistically should have received an automatic title shot upon signing with the company). The best option available would be to turn the Emelianenko/Rogers bout into a title fight for the vacant championship.

Stripping Overeem doesn’t mean you’re cutting ties with him. He can still return to the company and face Emelianenko for the belt when he’s done with his kickboxing commitments. But right now it’s time to make the division mean something if you have any hope of making a splash with regular mixed martial arts fans, and it’s tough to do that without a champion.

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