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By Peter Akinbo
Israel Adesanya’s coach, Eugene Bareman is confident that they can win their middleweight title rematch against Alex Pereira in the first quarter of 2023.
With Pereira now 2-0 over Adesanya in kickboxing and 1-0 in UFC, Bareman knows they’ve only got one more shot at this opponent.
“We’re quietly confident,” he said. “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.
“He’s a guy that builds his gameplan around mentally wearing down and trying to land one big shot. And he’s comfortable giving rounds and then not panicking, because he gives away rounds and it’s part of a bigger picture for him. Setting up what he ultimately is looking for. And with a few adjustments we can make some changes there and build on a lot of positive things that happened in that fight for us.”
Although, Adesanya sounded like he wanted to take time off to take care of some health injuries and just relax but according to Bareman, they’re ready and willing to do a fourth Pereira bout in quarter one of 2023.
“For sure, for sure,” Bareman told Submission Radio in a new interview. “That would work for us. I mean, 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.”
Bareman is the kind of coach who has kept Adesanya out of competition a year following past losses, but he clearly doesn’t think anything that drastic is needed after the Pereira TKO.
“We just have to change a couple of tactics,” he said. “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.”