City Kickboxing head coach Eugene Bareman doesn’t doubt that Israel Adesanya can avenge his loss to UFC middleweight champion Alex Pereira.
Adesanya (23-2 MMA, 12-2 UFC) lost his title to Pereira (7-1 MMA, 4-0 UFC) when he was stopped in Round 5 of their UFC 281 headliner last month. Adesanya was up 3-1 on the judges’ scorecards, but Pereira rallied to finish him by TKO in the fifth.
Bareman, the Coach of the Year at the 2022 World MMA Awards, likes what he saw out of his star pupil, and thinks with a couple of changes, Adesanya can get his hand raised.
“We’re quietly confident,” Bareman told Submission Radio. “You got to understand, we were winning that fight relatively comfortably. We felt we were taking the rounds. But not comfortable enough – when you’re fighting somebody like that, who’s game plan appears to be, it’s not a guy who builds his game plan around accumulation of damage.
“He’s a guy that builds his game plan around mentally wearing down and trying to land one big shot. And he’s comfortable giving rounds and then not panicking, because he gives away rounds, and it’s part of a bigger picture for him, setting up what he ultimately is looking for. And with a few adjustments, we can make some changes there and build on a lot of positive things that happened in that fight for us.”
The promotion hasn’t announced what’s next for Pereira, but Bareman thinks rematching Adesanya is what makes sense. Although Pereira appears to have Adesanya’s number with three wins over him, including two in kickboxing, Adesanya has performed well in those outings.
With their history, Bareman thinks it only makes sense that the UFC books an immediate rematch. He thinks Khamzat Chimaev’s call for a title shot against Pereira shouldn’t even be entertained.
“I haven’t seen the numbers on the last fight, but I’m sure they’re very, very good,” Bareman said. “I think in the middleweight division, I still think that’s the biggest fight. Khamzat’s a rising star, but he’s literally done nothing at middleweight. So he hasn’t established himself. You’re talking about two guys at the top of the food chain in terms of their status in combat sports. Khamzat’s a rising star. Like, he’s a massive rising star. But he’s not in the position of these two guys. This is the biggest fight. Khamzat still has to beat people at middleweight and work his way up to even fighting one of these guys.
“So, unless the politics take over and the business of the sport take over – and that’s essentially how we arrived at this fight that we’re talking about, right? So, it’s still the biggest fight to make. And at the end of the day, it’s not Alex’s choice. It will be Alex’s choice when he makes X-amount of title defenses and does well for the company and all that. Then it becomes Alex’s choice. But at the moment we’ve got a (former) champion who’s done so much for this company, who’s defended his title so many times. He kind of gets to … if he wants a rematch, I believe that that’s what he should get.”
