The Sean Strickland loss still remains Israel Adesanya’s toughest pill to swallow, according to his head coach.
Eugene Bareman praised middleweight champion Dricus Du Plessis (22-2 MMA, 8-0 UFC) for submitting Adesanya (24-4 MMA, 13-4 UFC) in the fourth round of their title fight at UFC 305 in August.
The City Kickboxing coach was pleased with Adesanya’s form and chalked up the loss to fatigue.
“You can’t take anything away from Dricus. He’s got underrated defense, underrated offense,” Bareman said on the “Who The Fook Are These Guys?” podcast. “People are so used to watching some of the prettiest and technical strikers that they immediately discredit other people that don’t look like that blueprint. They fail to see the genius in what they’re doing. It was a very close fight, and at the end of the day Israel fatigued. I’m not sure if Israel’s ever been submitted. I can’t remember.
“That position, Israel’s done that a thousand times and got out of it a thousand times. What causes that is the opponent putting pressure on you, pushes you to a place where you’re fatigued. You know what to do, but your brain’s not working, and your body’s not responding because you’re so fatigued. That’s fighting. That’s what makes it such an interesting sport, is that you’re working at the highest level under all this duress, and sometimes it gets the better of you, and it got the better of Israel.”
Adesanya now has lost back-to-back fights to Strickland and Du Plessis. The Strickland loss stunned many, including Adesanya.
“The Strickland loss, he’ll never get over,” Bareman said. “You just fought badly, and it was unexplainable. It’s intangible. It’s not measurable what caused it. You just go down a rabbit hole of a million things. But the Dricus fight, he was doing well. It was a great contest, and he got outmaneuvered. He got outdone.
“You can figure out exactly what happened, follow the path, figure out went wrong, and it’s very traceable. Those losses are much more easier to figure out rather than the unexplained sort of losses that kind of leave you scratching your head a little bit. So, he’s fine in that respect. Any loss is hard, but trust me this one’s a lot easier to take than the Strickland one.”
