Israel Adesanya’s head coach Eugene Bareman has commented for the first time since Adesanya’s recent loss to Dricus Du Plessis at UFC 305, stating that the former middleweight champion lost because of ‘terrible mistakes’.
Dricus Du Plessis emphatically retained the middleweight title recently at UFC 305, putting an end to his longstanding feud with former champion of the division, Israel Adesanya.
‘The Last Stylebender’ was returning for the first time in 11 months since his title loss to Sean Strickland, with it being the longest hiatus he has ever taken from the sport.
Eugene Bareman claims Israel Adesanya will never get over the Sean Strickland loss
Despite jumping straight back into a 185lb title shot on his return, Adesanya wasn’t doing so against the man who surprisingly took the belt off him.
The City Kickboxing head coach, Eugene Bareman has commented for the first time since Adesanya’s recent loss and has admitted that he actually prefers the way Adesanya reacts to a loss than he does to a win.
Bareman has always been an extremely honest figure in the MMA world and that is one of the reasons he and ‘The Last Stylebender’ have such a strong coach and fighter relationship.
“He’s handling it well and you’re right, I love the way he loses, I actually prefer the way he loses than the way he wins. I’m not a big fan of some of the ways that he wins but I’m definitely a big fan of the way he loses,” Bareman told ‘Who The Fook Are These Guys?’ in a recent podcast.
Following his UFC 287 win over Alex Pereira, Adesanya received some criticism for the way he celebrated in front of the Brazilian’s children, which is likely what the CKB head coach is referring to.
With the loss to Du Plessis coming as less of a surprise than his loss against Strickland, Bareman believes that Adesanya will never get over his loss to Strickland because there is no way of putting their finger on why it happened.
“The Strickland loss, he will never get over (it), he just fought badly it was just unexplainable, it’s intangible, it’s not measurable what caused it, you just go down a rabbit hole of a million things,” Bareman continued.
Eugene Bareman was ‘very surprised’ that Adesanya fatigued at UFC 305 resulting in his loss
Although the MMA masterminds can’t put their finger on his loss to ‘Tarzan’, Bareman has stated that he believes Adesanya’s loss to the South African at UFC 305 was a result of fatiguing, which he was surprised about.
The 35-year-old widely documented his preparation for UFC 305, and admitted that it was the first time in his fighting career that he was living like a proper athlete during camp. The Nigerian-born middleweight even came into the fight in arguably the best shape he’s ever been in, packing on decent muscle mass.
“I was quite happy with the fight and the way it was developing, I was quite confident going into the round that it got stopped. I thought we were breaking him down and we were slowly probing and finding the opportunities for Israel to find the finishing shot that would eventually bring Dricus to his demise.
“It looked like to me, those were developing and coming along, and then Israel made some terrible mistakes, and those terrible mistakes were a result of him fatiguing. I thought the fatigue was a little bit of a surprise to us that he fatigued that much later in the rounds,” Bareman admitted.
Former foe, Pereira recently stated that he thought Adesanya suffered an injury during the fight and Adesanya came out and seemed to cryptically confirm Pereira’s thoughts.
Despite that, the 35-year-old isn’t thought to have suffered an injury and his next step in the sport is largely unknown as of this moment.