Israel Adesanya’s coach compares Dricus Du Plessis and Sean Strickland Ls

According to his head coach, the loss of Sean Strickland is still the hardest pill for Israel Adesanya to swallow.

Eugene Bareman praised middleweight champion Dricus Du Plessis (22-2 MMA, 8-0 UFC) for forcing Adesanya (24-4 MMA, 13-4 UFC) to submit in the fourth round of their title fight at UFC 305 in August.

The City Kickboxing coach was pleased with Adesanya’s form and attributed the loss to exhaustion.

“You can’t deny Dricus. His defense and attack are underrated,” Bareman said on the “Who The Fook Are These Guys?” podcast. “People are so used to seeing some of the most beautiful and technically skilled strikers that if they don’t look like that, they immediately discredit others who don’t. They don’t realize how brilliant what they do is. It was a very close fight and at the end of the day Israel was exhausted. I’m not sure Israel was ever subdued. I can’t remember.”

“Israel has played this position a thousand times and got out of it a thousand times. The reason is that the opponent puts pressure on you and brings you to a point where you are exhausted. You know what to do, but your brain doesn’t work and your body doesn’t respond because you are so exhausted. That’s fighting. That’s what makes this sport so interesting: you work at the highest level under all this pressure and sometimes the opponent overwhelms you, and that’s how he overwhelms Israel.”

Adesanya has now lost two consecutive fights against Strickland and Du Plessis. The loss to Strickland shocked many, including Adesanya.

“He’ll never get over the loss to Strickland,” Bareman said. “He just fought poorly and it was inexplicable. It’s intangible. It’s not measurable what caused it. You just go down a rabbit hole of a million things. But he was good in the fight against Dricus. It was a great match and he was outmaneuvered. He was outmatched.”

“You can figure out exactly what happened, follow the path, figure out what went wrong, and it’s very relatable. Those losses are a lot easier to understand than the inexplicable losses that leave you scratching your head a little bit. So in that respect, he’s doing OK. Any loss is tough, but believe me, this one is a lot easier to take than Strickland’s.”