UFC 271: Israel Adesanya’s Coach Offers Thoughts On Title Fight

Israel Adesanya defends his UFC middleweight title at UFC 271 vs. Robert Whittaker.

The bout is a rematch of a contest won by Adesanya.

UFC 271 takes place this Saturday night from the Toyota Center in Houston. The main card airs live on ESPN+ pay-per-view.

Recently, Adesanya’s coach, Eugene Bareman, was a guest on Submission Radio to discuss the title fight. 

While Adesanya had no troubles in the first meeting, Bareman knows Whittaker will be a changed fighter this time around.

“He’s made a tremendous improvement over those three fights,” Bareman said. “And I mean, those three fights have made us tidy a few things up, and obviously showed some other vulnerabilities that we didn’t see in his previous body of work.

“So, it’s a bit of both, it’s a bit of both. He’s got better, he’s showed some vulnerabilities that we didn’t see so much in his previous body of work. So, yeah, this camp, it’s been a tough one this camp.

“You’re always battling with your kind of like moral consciousness, like, against complacency. Like, man, rematches are so hard. You know, guys always train twice as hard for the rematch.

“So, then that kind of reflects how you start to train, and then it just kind of escalates like that, and then we end up, yeah, like, we always do, but I feel this camp has been an exhausting one, where we’ve really tried to put complacency on the backburner and just work right to the limit of where we should be working.”

The two have shared some interesting moments in the pre-fight lead up, and Bareman believes that could happen again.

“I don’t know which way Israel will swing, if he’ll take a dig at Rob. I feel like this fight’s more business,” he said. “Like, we just wanna get on with the business. There hasn’t been a lot of press from Israel. I think Robert’s maybe done a bit. I don’t know how much press he’s done.”