Eugene Bareman doesn’t think Israel Adesanya should top his first win over Robert Whittaker with another finish.
Adesanya (21-1 MMA, 10-1 UFC) had a flawless performance against Whittaker (23-5 MMA, 14-3 UFC) at UFC 243 and knocked him out in the second round to unify the middleweight titles in 2019.
“The Last Stylebender” said he’s planning on putting on an even better performance when the pair runs things back in the UFC 271 main event Saturday, but his head coach would like to see things pan out in a specific way.
“People aren’t going to agree with me, but the ultimate thing you can do in fight sports, I think, is not a knockout,” Bareman told Submission Radio. “It’s a whitewash. And so what I would like to happen is just a five-round whitewash where there is no stoppage this time. But like, every round, there’s just accumulative, accumulative, accumulative damage and it just leaves no doubt. It just leaves no doubt. There’s 25 minutes of mastery.”
In his most recent title defense against Marvin Vettori at UFC 263 in June 2021, Adesanya dominated the Italian with a much more definitive performance than their first outing in 2018, which he won by split decision.
Since he lost the belt to Adesanya, Whittaker has looked more solid than ever with three big wins against top middleweight contenders. In a recent interview with MMA Junkie, Whittaker alluded to mixing things up with his grappling this time, in which he may look to mimic some of Jan Blachowicz’s tactics when he bounced Adesanya out of the ranks of the unbeaten in their light heavyweight title bout at UFC 259.
But Bareman doesn’t expect Whittaker to follow Blachowicz’s blueprint.
“They have a very smart team, these guys,” Bareman said. “I studied them extensively for the first fight and I quickly figured out that they’re an elite team. They’re a very smart team. They know they can’t transpose what Jan did to Israel.
“There’s little things you could take, but at the end of the day you’ve got to work with the athlete that you’ve got in front of you, and they understand that they don’t have Jan in front of them, so they’re too smart to do that. But I expect a little bit less panic and a little bit more respect from Rob. I expect him to not be so aggressive this time. That’s the only thing I can take a good calculated guess at.”
UFC 271 takes place Saturday at Toyota Center in Houston. The main card airs on pay-per-view following prelims on ESPN and early prelims on ESPN+.
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