City Kickboxing head coach Eugene Bareman took a good look at how [autotag]Israel Adesanya[/autotag] needs to approach UFC middleweight champion [autotag]Dricus Du Plessis[/autotag].
Former champ Adesanya (24-3 MMA, 13-3 UFC) challenges Du Plessis (21-2 MMA, 7-0 UFC) in Saturday’s UFC 305 (pay-per-view, ESPN, ESPN+) main event at RAC Arena in Perth, Australia.
Sean Strickland’s forward pressure gave Adesanya problems in their title fight at UFC 293, making Du Plessis confident that he can find similar success. Bareman acknowledges that Adesanya has to be wary of that and time his offense accordingly.
“The trick is really – we know Israel can go forward, and we know Israel can fight off the back foot, and he can do really well off the front foot,” Bareman told Submission Radio. “But the trick is finding the balance of what we need. If we get too much on the front foot, that’s going to obviously make us vulnerable for certain things. And if we get too much on the back foot, there’s going to be vulnerabilities there. So, it’s finding the exact balance of what you need between those two to win the fight.
“And that’s going to be part of the challenge of the fight of the night, because that’s going to be an adjustment that has to be done on the fly by all teams. How aggressive you have to be and how much you have to be on the back foot and start to look to counter. How much you have to look to be the kind of boxer-puncher, boxer-counter fighter at the same time. Like, these are the little things that get tweaked on the night. So, that’s the fascinating part that everybody can look forward to, right?”
Adesanya’s most recent win came with his back against the cage, where he sniped Alex Pereira with two perfect counter rights to knock him out at UFC 287. Despite coming off a title loss to Strickland, DraftKings has Adesanya as a slight -115 favorite to reclaim his title against Du Plessis, who is a +105 underdog.
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For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 305.