It would be hard to top Israel
Adesanya’s coronation as middleweight champion, when he
authored a second-round knockout of Robert
Whittaker in the UFC 243 main event in October 2019.
Eugene
Bareman, Adesanya’s coach at City Kickboxing, sees one way in
which “The Last Stylebender” can surpass that performance when he
faces Whittaker in a rematch at UFC 271
on Saturday in Houston.
“People aren’t going to agree with me, but the ultimate thing you
can do in fight sports, I think, is not a knockout. It’s a
whitewash,” Bareman recently told Submission Radio. “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.”
Adesanya has proven to be a worthy champion since that victory,
defending the 185-pound belt on three occasions with triumphs over
Marvin
Vettori, Paulo Costa
and Yoel
Romero. However, Bareman claims that a knockout victory over
Whittaker hasn’t made Adesanya overconfident, especially since his
opponent has rebounded to post an impressive three-bout winning
streak against Darren Till,
Jared
Cannonier and Kelvin
Gastelum.
“When you win in that fashion, yeah, that little complacency kind
of devil that sits on your shoulder, you’re hyper-aware of it. So
you really want to not fall victim to it,” Bareman said. You kind
of almost like push things to the absolute limit because you’ve
kind of got that thing on your conscience all the time.
“So, in terms of like motivating him to kind of get up for this
fight and train hard, it hasn’t been too difficult. We’ve really
emphasized that Robert has more to give, that Robert has more to
give, but we haven’t forgotten that Israel had a whole lot more to
give as well. So, as Robert gives more, Israel also has much more
stuff to give in the fight. So, this fight will be a bit more
interesting.”
Adesanya hasn’t been completely flawless since his first fight
against Whittaker. The Nigerian-born Kiwi came up short in a bid to
become a two-division champion, falling to Jan
Blachowicz via unanimous decision at UFC 259. Bareman believes
Whittaker’s camp will realistically take what it can from the
Blachowicz fight, but they won’t be able to duplicate that
performance on Saturday night. That said, Bareman is expecting a
different approach from Whittaker.
“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.”