Israel Adesanya isn’t finished with the light heavyweight division just yet, says his coach Eugene Bareman. Adesanya challenged 205-pound champ Jan Blachowicz for the title, earning himself his first MMA loss in the process. His subsequent return to middleweight was dominant, featuring landmark victories over Paulo Costa and Marvin Vettori, but Bareman says a shift back up to light heavyweight is still on the cards.
In a recent appearance on The MMA Hour, Bareman said Adesanya and his team have no regrets, and they want to make the move once again.
Adesanya’s Coach Promises Another Run at 205
“That was an opportunity that presented itself, and the only thing that I would regret now — and Israel would regret it too — is if we hadn’t taken that opportunity.
We’d still be sitting here today thinking what could have been. At the end of the day, what benefit was there to not taking it? An undefeated record? Who cares about an undefeated record?
The biggest benefit now, in hindsight, is that Israel is a much better fighter because of that loss. That sort of inevitably happens, that’s a common thing with fighting.
Israel was able to bounce back from that fight far better than what he’d have had to had he just carried on fighting Paulo Costa.
It’s essentially what gave him the motivation and the strength to push him to the next level against Paulo Costa and against Marvin Vettori and now against Robert [Whittaker]. So nothing bad came out of that fight, in my opinion.”
Bareman continued, pointing out that Israel Adesanya’s goals have not changed despite the setback. “The Last Stylebender” repeatedly declared his goal to be remembered as one of the greatest fighters ever to grace the UFC, and becoming a two-division champ is a surefire way to do so.
“We set a goal, and goals don’t just disappear because you fail at them. How many instances in history has there been a goal and no one reached it the first time? I believe it’s still in Israel’s heart and mind that he wants to chase that next weight division up. We’ll take the lessons from the first attempt and transpose them in the second attempt.
The only thing I’d have done different from that fight, which we found out in hindsight wasn’t an option, I would have built Israel into a 205er, a proper 205er.
But we made a calculated guess that we could beat Jan at our walking around middleweight weight, and we did that because we didn’t want to put on muscle and then reduce Israel back down to middleweight, which we knew was always going to happen.”
If Izzy puts on the right amount of muscle, do you think he can claim a second title? Let us know in the comments.
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