City Kickboxing head coach Eugene Bareman speaks with Megan Anderson on UFC Fight Camp before Israel Adesanya’s …
The Comeback tour is a well and truly in effect for Israel out of Sanya and as he prepares to try to reclaim his UFC middleweight belt against Alex Pereira at UFC 287 this weekend I’m now joined by his head coach Eugene Berman who is live from the strip in Miami Eugene obviously you don’t ever want to see your Fighters lose but it is a part of the sport with how close you guys are as a team at City kickboxing how hard was this loss for everyone afterwards obviously I lost this difficult but um a loss is something that a team deals with uh uh a big team like mine that we deal with regularly so we have a system that we’ve developed over all these losses and um we just enact that and we get straight into orders that um you know we start the process of coming back and we’ve refined it a little bit over the years so Israel hasn’t been a part of that too often but Ezra has lost before and uh this is a this is an unfamiliar territory right you’re speaking of unfamiliar territory he handled that loss with a lot of poise a lot of Grace we proud with how he handled it considering all of the hype that comes with his fights yeah I mean I was it was expected um Megan it was expected Israel’s always um handled losses really really well um uh even if we thought that they were controversial and that he was and perhaps he shouldn’t have lost um we’ve always kind of like um you know taken the loss in good spirit and taking the lessons uh moved on and got better like I just I expected Israel to handle the loss uh the way he did so and super proud of that but also uh it was expected exactly uh there’s usually a couple of suitcase books in guys on each card usually kind of stack them with the team not this time was there a particular reason why you didn’t put a couple of the other guys on the card as well to be honest we had the option um but we wanted to put as well on a car by himself right so uh we just wanted a full concentrated effort from the team and the coaches on Israel I mean I I think we do a really good job of uh when Israel is fighting with multiple guys of um making sure that he gets the right attention and that all the boys get the right attention but um we just wanted to approach this a little differently and Ezra hasn’t been on a card by himself for for a long time so we just now now we just wanted them to have the feel of being the soul focal point of the whole um yeah the whole mission if you like right and as a student you know over the last four to five months since that loss have you seen any changes in him or any any you know increase in Focus coming into this rematch you just used our keyword for the camp and that’s Focus and we’ve we’ve kind of coined that word and made that the word of the camp because the the focus is the key part of the fight for Israel it’s not you know I’m amongst if you count the two fights outside of the UFC with Pereira I mean with put most of the minutes in Israel’s favor we’ve won most of those fights but he’s lost Focus right for a second and that’s kind of what we’re trying to negate that just loss of focus even for a second even for 20 seconds even for 10 seconds we’re trying to negate that and we’re trying to stay mentally at a very high level for the entire 25 minutes so it’s kind of been our phrase of the campers uh focus and you kind of touched on that just then well speaking of mental spaces if you will Izzy seems pretty locked in coming into this week the most I feel like locked in that we’ve seen him today in his UFC tenure where do you feel like his head is at coming into this now fourth fight with Alex considering there is so much history between them there’s no there’s no like he hasn’t put extra weight on his shoulders because um because he’s lost to Alex okay like he is that it’s not put that part of it isn’t putting extra pressure on him where the pressure is coming from is more internally um from you know with Israel and from the team and from the coaches um we love like this is what we do like this is the biggest challenge in the sport one of the biggest challenges challenges in the sport to fight someone with this unique ability that Pereira has it’s like it’s the there’s two or three challenges in the sport um which some people don’t get get a chance to you know get a chance to take on in their whole career and we’ve got this opportunity and with the history with the history in mind as well we’ve got this little opportunity now to kind of like prove to ourselves that we can that the coaches in Israel can come up with something that can kind of uh defeat this very unique Champion um that is Alex Carrera so that that’s the challenge challenge there’s no pressure from the fact that he’s lost before like those things just stay in the past all right well Alex is definitely a a very particular puzzle to pick apart but last question before we let you go what uh what Israel out of stamina should we expect to see this weekend at UFC 287 Israel to um look back to his past a little bit and kind of take the shackles off himself mentally and find that find some of the things that he had in the past and I’m talking about his decision making um the decision-making ability the ability to flow in a fight that he used to have when he was younger and things used to become a little bit more freely I’ve asked them to try and find that I’ve asked him to look at particular fights in this past I’m not going to say which one’s obviously but I’ve asked him to reach back there and find that fighter again and bring and amalgamate that with all the new skills that he’s had and if we can find that balance um we’ve got a pretty good Israel going into Saturday night love to hear it with Eugene as always thank you so much for your time and good luck to you and the team yeah thank you once again Megan pleasure to talk to you thank you for watching ESPN on YouTube for live streaming Sports and premium content subscribe to ESPN Plus