Trainer Eugene Bareman is highly confident in his fighter Israel Adesanya to defeat Alex Pereira in a rematch for the UFC middleweight throne.
Between kickboxing and MMA, Brazil’s ‘Poatan’ Pereira has defeated ‘The Last Stylebender’ Israel Adesanya in all three of their meetings, with two being won by knockout. The two fighters most recently fought headlining UFC 281 in a back-and-forth fight but Pereira won via fifth-round TKO.
The Brazilian-born Pereira is well known for his knockout power. Before his knockout victory run in the UFC, he was a two-division world champion in GLORY Kickboxing. Between MMA and kickboxing ‘Poatan’ has won the vast majority of his fights by way of knockout stoppage.
In spite of the knockout threat, with a few adjustments, Eugene Bareman believes that Israel Adesanya would defeat Alex Pereira if they met again in the octagon.
Eugene Bareman likes Israel Adesanya’s chances in a rematch
In an interview with Submission Radio, the New Zealand-based trainer Bareman explained:
“We just have to change a couple of tactics. Yeah, like I said, change a couple of tactics, a couple things and we’ll be sweet. And we can do that within that given timeframe, yeah … We’re quietly confident. You gotta 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 gameplan appears to be, it’s not a guy who builds his gameplan around accumulation of damage.“
Bareman also added that the adjustments and changes Adesanya needs to win would be quite minor. He continued:
“Like I said, we don’t have to extensively reinvent the wheel. In my opinion, we have to just tweak a few things and we can turn that fight around. So yeah, that’s what it more comes down to, is how much time do we need to train to kind of make the changes and the tweaks that we need to turn this fight around. And I just don’t anticipate we need to do a hell of a lot.” [Transcript courtesy of MMA Mania]
See the full interview below:
