Head Coach of City Kickboxing Eugene Bareman believes that fighting style of Islam Makhachev isn’t crowd pleasing, and believes Oliveira presents a bigger stylistic threat to Alexander Volkanovski.
City Kickboxing has garnered quite the reputation inside the fight game. With champions in various promotions, the New Zealand based training facility trains some of the biggest names in the UFC. Champions including the likes of Israel Adesanya and Alexander Volkanovski.
But at the man at the top of the coaching is Eugene Bareman. In recent years, he has garnered quite the reputation for the being the coach of so many champion fighters. It comes as no surprise that he is someone whose opinion highly valued by MMA news media.
Recently on Submission Radio, Bareman was asked about a potential title fight in the lightweight division between Islam Makhachev and Charles Oliveira, “I think Islam (Makhachev) deserves the title shot. Whether they give him the title shot is another question. The UFC is a business, and their business is to sell tickets and make fans come. Islam doesn’t have the most crowd-pleasing style, so his job is to keep winning and winning and eventually you can’t deny him. I think he’s getting close to doing that.”
The Kiwi was asked about the future of Volkanovski. The Featherweight champion has talked about going up a division to Lightweight. Bareman was asked who would be better matchup for Volk, and he had this to say, “It’s not something that Volk (Volkanovski) has to contemplate at the moment. He will fight whoever is the champion.”
“(Stylistically) Olivera definitely is the more difficult match., in my opinion. Oliveira has a more well rounded skills-set, so it’s more things to deal with. Whereas for Islam, we can narrow it down to a few things and focus on that.”
The prospect of Alexander Volkanovski in the Lightweight division is as exciting as it gets. A potential matchup between the Aussie and Islam Makhachev would see Eugene Bareman going up against Khabib Nurmagomedov in the coaching department.
