Biography
Overeem was born in London, England, on (1980-05-17)May 17, 1980 to a Dutch mother and Jamaican father. His parents divorced when he was six years old. His mother, Clair, then moved Alistair and his brother Valentijn to the Netherlands, where he spent the remainder of his childhood.
As a child, Overeem competed in judo, track and field and basketball. When he was fifteen, his brother Valentijn took him to Chris Dolman's gym to teach him how to defend himself. At first he found the training overly violent and aggressive, but after training with Bas Rutten, Joop Kasteel and others, he eventually learned to enjoy it.
Read more about this topic: Alistair Overeem
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West [Cicily Isabel Fairfield] (1892–1983)
“A biography is like a handshake down the years, that can become an arm-wrestle.”
—Richard Holmes (b. 1945)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)