Overeem: Family always comes first

First of all, thank you to everyone who has tweeted at me wishing my mother well after last week's blog. I've been very touched by your concerns. I wasn't going to talk about this publicly, but feel I should as so many of you have sent well-wishes to her and me.

My mom is doing ok. She's had cancer twice in the past, a very aggressive kind and it was a long ordeal for her and my family. The treatment she had was very hard; she had experimental treatment to burn the tumor from the inside out. It worked and saved her life, but there were complications from it. Recently, she had a check-up and the doctors found a couple of cells in her body that they were concerned about. That's why I flew home.

You have to understand the negative emotions that scare brought to my family. We're a small family – it is me, my mother, my brother and my grandmother and that's it. We all have to be there for each other and it was the right decision for me to abandon the idea of preparing in Las Vegas for my UFC 141 main event with Brock Lesnar.

I'm not going to try and say getting this news hasn't been stressful during my preparations for the fight. Let's be honest: it does get you stressed, your mother being sick. But family stuff happens to everyone – athletes, businessmen, whoever we are, and we all should put our families as a priority no matter what is happening in our careers.

But to my fans who are worried that I will not be 100 percent ready to rip Brock Lesnar apart on December 30 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, let me promise you: coming back to Holland for this camp will not be a factor at all.

Let me explain: While I am worried for my mother and needed to get back here, this is the one other thing I am thinking about at all other than my fight. But I can handle the stress of helping my mother right now. It is the only thing I have in my life that is stressful other than this fight until the end of the month.

I've had bad years in the sport before: 2006-07 was a very bad time for me in my career and that was all because of what was happening to me in my personal life. I had four or five very stressful and bad things happening all at once.

First and most devastating to me, I thought I was going to lose my mother. She'd just been diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer and doctors told us it could be over very quickly, it was so aggressive. I also had a relationship problem, my daughter had just been born and I also had a business which really demanded a lot of attention.

I was getting stress, negative emotions and bad things happening in all aspects of my life and my career was very much affected. I lost three fights in a row that I shouldn't have. I should have taken a break from fighting and focused on everything else I needed to keep fighting because of financial realities.

On top of all that, I was weakening my body by forcing it to fight at light heavyweight when I should have been a heavyweight.

I know my fans are worried that I am distracted right now but trust me, to compare the situation that had me go back to Holland two weeks ago to what I was dealing with back in 2006-07, it isn't even close.

I say to MMA fans, again, don't worry, I will be sending this guy back to WWE for you.

I will be sending a blog to Yahoo! Sports every week between now and UFC 141 on Dec. 30. In the meantime, check out more videos and updates from me at my website and follow me on twitter.

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