Eugene Bareman, the head coach of Israel Adesanya, has an ideal plan of how the UFC 271 main event fight plays out.
Adesanya is set to rematch Whittaker in a very intriguing matchup as they are clearly the two best middleweights and the first time they met, it was Adesanya winning by TKO. However, this time around, Bareman hopes the champ puts on a clinic and shuts out Whittaker over all five rounds to prove how much better he is.
“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 told Submission Radio (via MMAFighting). “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. It’s just 25 minutes of mastery.”
Although Israel Adesanya clearly beat Robert Whittaker in the first fight with the knockout, Bareman says that isn’t impacting Adesanya at all. Instead, he’s still motivated to go out there and get the win as they know how dangerous the former champ is.
“When you win in that fashion, yeah, that little complacency kind of devil that sits on your shoulder, you’re hyper-aware of it,” Bareman said. “So you really want to not fall victim to it. 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.”
