Auckland, New Zealand, is a city of only one and a half million people. This weekend, four City Kickboxing fighters will appear on the UFC 281 card, including the defending middleweight champion, Israel Adesanya. Also featured on the card will be lightweights Dan Hooker and Brad Riddell, and light heavyweight Carlos Ulberg.
In a recent appearance on The MMA Hour, the City Kickboxing teammates revealed how head coach Eugene Bareman’s unorthodox motivational methods, including occasionally brandishing a machete, united the gym ahead of this weekend’s main event.
How Knife-Wielding Eugene Bareman United City Kickboxing
Adesanya described how brutal Bareman can be. After days of hard sparring, Bareman sat the team down and let them have it, accusing his fighters of complacency.
“He’s just a f****** weirdo! He’s human and he makes errors, so he got it in his head that this kid needs a kick in the butt. But I didn’t. I’m glad he did. But I was already stepped up. I remember the speech. It was quite ruthless. At the time, I was like, ‘What the f***?’
You know that fidget spinner? He has knives!” Adesanya added that Bareman used to bring a machete to the gym, but that his blades now are more for “show and tell”. Adesanya continued, pointing out that the familial relationships within the gym can be confusing for newcomers.
“We have some very family/team oriented environment there. There’s younger fighters that come into that and can maybe get the wrong idea and get a bit complacent about things, maybe because of the relationship that we’ve had with Eugene and other coaches.
For Israel, and [Mike] ‘Blood Diamond’ [Mathetha], and me and Carlos [Ulberg], we’ve been with them for a very long time, so we have a different relationship to some of the newer fighters that come in. Maybe he felt that they were starting to get more relaxed. At the end of the day, it’s a high-risk, high-reward job. So maybe it was what was required was to make everybody realize that he’s a coach, first and foremost, and his job is to get us to win, and everybody’s on the same playing field.”
Dan Hooker credits Eugene Bareman with his success, and refuses to entertain the notion of training anywhere but City Kickboxing.
“I’m going to train at City Kickboxing forever, no matter how many times Eugene screams at me and does these sort of things.
That’s what separates us. So he’s able to push us and prod us and break us down emotionally, because there’s no back door. There’s no leaving. We’re in it for the long haul.” How would you react to a knife-wielding Eugene Bareman? Let us know in the comments.
