Israel Adesanya’s coach has admitted he wanted more time before the huge rematch with Alex Pereira at UFC 287 in April.
Pereira dethroned the middleweight champion with a fifth-round stoppage, claiming the belt from the man he’d beaten twice during his kickboxing days.
The Brazilian is the first fighter to beat Adesanya at middleweight and Eugene Bareman is tasked with helping him avenge the loss.
“If I had a choice, which I quite often don’t, then I would probably have waited longer just to give Israel a little bit more time between a stoppage like that and the next fight,” Bareman told the MMA Hour.
“Even in an ideal world I would have done what they do in boxing. I would have brought in a couple of guys for Israel to warm up on and then fight Pereira.
“In the UFC, we don’t have that choice and, quite frankly, Israel is 100 percent adamant that he must be the next person to fight Alex Pereira. Beyond all doubt.
“So much so that when they were talking about Pereira fighting—I can’t remember, it was for one particular card, I think they had no main event or they had someone pull out of a main event at the end of last year—so much so that when there was talk that Pereira was going to fight, Israel was like, ‘We’ll fight.’
“Before Israel had his surgery and everything, Israel was prepared to take the fight on four to five weeks’ notice if Pereira was willing to take the fight.”
Adesanya was beating Pereira on the scorecards up until the fifth-round stoppage back at UFC 281.
And some claimed the call from the referee to intervene came too early, not allowing ‘The Last Stylebender’ time to recover.