Israel Adesanya will never get over his surprise loss to Sean Strickland, says his head coach

“The Last Stylebender” returned for the first time in 11 months after losing the title to Sean Strickland, marking the longest break he has ever taken from the sport.

Eugene Bareman claims Israel Adesanya will never get over the loss of Sean Strickland

Although Adesanya immediately jumped back into a title fight at 185 pounds upon his return, he did not do so against the man who surprisingly took the belt from him.

City Kickboxing head coach Eugene Bareman spoke out for the first time since Adesanya’s recent loss, admitting that he actually likes the way Adesanya responds to defeat better than the way he responds to victory.

Bareman has always been an extremely honest personality in the MMA world and that is one of the reasons why he and “The Last Stylebender” have such a strong coaching and fighting relationship.

“He handles it well and you’re right, I love the way he loses. Actually, I like the way he loses better than the way he wins. I’m not a huge fan of some of the ways he wins, but I’m definitely a huge fan of the way he loses,” Bareman said in a recent “Who The Fook Are These Guys?” podcast.

Following his victory over Alex Pereira at UFC 287, Adesanya was criticized for the way he celebrated in front of the Brazilian’s children, which is what the CKB head coach is likely referring to.

Since the loss to Du Plessis was less of a surprise than the one to Strickland, Bareman believes Adesanya will never get over his loss to Strickland because he cannot say exactly why it happened.

“He’ll never get over the loss to Strickland, he just fought poorly, it was just inexplicable, it’s intangible, it’s not measurable what caused it, you just go down a rabbit hole of a million things,” Bareman continued.

Eugene Bareman was “very surprised” that Adesanya tired at UFC 305, which led to his loss

Although the MMA Masterminds cannot say exactly why Adesanya lost to “Tarzan,” Bareman has stated that he believes Adesanya’s loss to the South African at UFC 305 was due to exhaustion, which he was surprised about.

The 35-year-old documented his preparations for UFC 305 in detail and admitted that he lived like a real athlete for the first time in his fighting career during training camp. The Nigerian-born middleweight even went into the fight in arguably the best shape he’s ever been in and packed on some serious muscle mass.

“I was pretty happy with the fight and how it went. I was pretty sure he was going to get stopped in the next round. I thought we were going to wear him down and slowly probe him and find opportunities for Israel to land the final blow that would finally kill Dricus.

“It looked to me like these mistakes were developing and coming, and then Israel made some terrible mistakes, and those terrible mistakes were the result of his fatigue. I thought the fatigue was a bit of a surprise to us that he was tiring so much later in the rounds,” Bareman admitted.

Former opponent Pereira recently commented that he thought Adesanya sustained an injury during the fight, and Adesanya came out and seemed to cryptically confirm Pereira’s thoughts.

Nevertheless, it is assumed that the 35-year-old has not sustained an injury and his next step in the sport is largely unknown at this point.

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