‘Sean Strickland Is Not Some Magical Fighter’

City Kickboxing’s Eugene Bareman knows why his pupil Israel Adesanya lost his last fight, and it’s not because of Sean Strickland’s ‘magical’ fighting abilities.

Israel Adesanya has been a busy man, fighting five times in less than two years. The result hasn’t been perfect: he lost his title to Alex Pereira before regaining it in an immediate rematch. And then he dropped the belt again to Sean Strickland in a fight everyone expected him to dominate.

Was burnout the cause of the loss? Maybe, but according to Adesanya’s coach Eugene Bareman, “The Last Stylebender” wouldn’t have been burnt out if he was staying focused like a champion should.

“No, Israel can’t get burned out fighting three or four times a year,” Bareman told She Loves The Gloves. “The issue is what’s happening between these fights. In my opinion, as a professional athlete, Israel didn’t do what he needed to do between those fights to not be burned out.”

“In order to remain a champion, at the highest level of our sport, you have to live a certain lifestyle, a lifestyle that reinvigorates you. You have to be focused on your goals in the four to six months between now and your next fight, instead of waiting for the UFC to call with a specific opponent to start the preparation.”

“Israel will probably disagree with this and argue with me — he does that a lot,” Bareman concluded. “But I’m usually the one who’s right.”

The City Kickboxing head also addressed the loss to Strickland head on.

“The most important thing that people need to understand and decide for themselves is the following: was the reason for Strickland’s success something that Sean did, or was it what Israel didn’t do?” he asked. “Israel has faced all kinds of strikers in the past. And some of them had a style that was similar to Sean Strickland’s — not identical, but similar. All you need to do is have a look at those fights, how Israel was able to perform, and what the end result was.”

“I would like to have a chance to prove that we can beat any style and that Sean Strickland is not some kind of a magical fighter. He’s a good fighter, but nothing he did in that cage was what we hadn’t seen before. I think it will be clear in the rematch that there were other factors in that first fight that have affected its outcome.”

After teasing a very long break, Adesanya is now expected to return sometime in 2024. Will it be against Dricus Du Plessis? Sean Strickland? At UFC 300? We have nothing but rumors to rely on at this point, and Eugene Bareman certainly isn’t sharing any hard dates right now.