Inside the Mastermind - Interview with Eugene Bareman

The founder and head coach of City Kickboxing, Eugene Bareman needs no introductions. Bareman is the man behind two of the modern MMA’s greatest championship reigns: that of Israel Adesanya and Alexander Volkanovski. Apart from this, his star-packed team roster includes combat sports’ creme de la creme, with names like Dan Hooker, Kai-Kara France, Carlos Ulberg, Brad Ridell, and others.

But before he ever became a coach, Bareman started his journey in combat sports as a professional fighter, conducting 48 matches across several disciplines. In 2007, Eugene co-founded the CKB gym, completely altering not only his own fate but the face of modern martial arts as a whole. A fact supported by Bareman and CKB being named coach of the year and gym of the year respectively, for two years in a row in 2019–2020.

I had the chance to visit the man responsible for shaping the careers of MMA’s biggest superstars at his famous “lab” in the very heart of New Zealand’s largest city, Auckland. After being generously invited to watch the team’s morning practice, I got to chat with the master strategist himself, and ask him a few questions — about Israel Adesanya, Alex Volkanovski, Ilia Topuria, and MMA in general.

She Loves The Gloves: Eug, first things first — I’m sure you’ve noticed but I’m a huge fan of the CKB team. Having seen most of your interviews, I’ll try my best to keep my questions as unique as possible. But before we start talking about specific members of your team, could you share with me your favorite memory as a coach?

Bareman: Obviously the bouts — from Israel and Volkanovski — as these represent the pinnacle of our sport. I think it would be the same for any coach. However, a lot of my favorite memories aren’t exactly connected to such esteemed accomplishments. There were several people that I’ve helped progress to a fight that have had some massive challenges in their lives, and who would never imagine they had the ability to fight. Winning championships is great but these are the stories that stand out in my mind, because these people never in a million years thought they had the capability to enter the cage against another person.

This one girl always comes to mind. We went through the whole training and preparation process together. Then, just before she walked out for a fight, she had a complete panic attack. I’m talking elevated heart rate, dizziness… all that. But eventually we got her into the ring, she fought her ass off, won the fight, and had one of the greatest experiences of her life. The fight was great but the greatest experience was the journey to get there — to help her be the person that made that final jump even as her instincts were telling her not to do it. She went and did it, and never regretted it.

She Loves The Gloves: Does she still train?

Bareman: Yeah, she still trains to this day.

There was another girl — she got into a very complicated situation in her personal life. I’m not gonna speak too much on it but she was a victim of kidnapping, and you can sort of imagine all the other stuff that went into it. But she managed to use — and I’ve got to be very careful here — not the skills that she learnt with us, per say, but the confidence that fighting gave her, to escape the difficult situation she was in. In the end, it brought her to safety.

She Loves The Gloves: So, in her case MMA was literally life-saving?

Bareman: You could say so. Again, it was the confidence and the instincts gained from training that made it possible more than any moves.

I’ve been in this gym for more than 15 years, and we’ve had a lot of people come through here whose lives have been changed like that. Those are some of the lesser-known memories that come to my mind right away.

She Loves The Gloves: I can definitely vouch for the MMA’s ability to turn one’s life upside down. But you mentioned having a lot of people come through the gym. What is the biggest challenge of coaching a huge team like CKB?

Bareman: For me personally I think it’s servicing, satisfying and taking care of everybody’s individual needs. And I’m not even talking about holding pads or skill-development. I’m talking about the spiritual, emotional, mental side of the sport. Yes, they all train together and they all take care of each other as a team but every fighter enters the ring or the octagon alone. There are certain situations that happen during those 3, 5 or however many rounds that you can only prepare for by putting in the time with the coach. Understanding all sides of my fighters takes conversations, connection, it takes time. You have got to know them, know their motivations, got to be able to read them a little — is something wrong with this person today, and that’s why he’s not performing well? At the same time they need to be comfortable enough to openly tell you: “coach, I’m struggling today because of the situation with my mom, or this or that”.

She Loves The Gloves: Well, obviously. Life doesn’t just revolve around what’s happening in the octagon.

Bareman: Not every coach shares this philosophy but I believe that in order to optimize your coaching and optimize your athlete’s learning you have to get all those things right. You can’t just do the training and pretend that outside of that nothing else counts. It’s not just black and white. It’s can’t be partial or compartmentalized — it’s a lifestyle.

She Loves The Gloves: That’s an interesting point. You often hear people argue that in MMA 80% of success is mental. From what you’re saying, it would seem that you agree with that statement.

Bareman: Absolutely. The majority of this sport is mental. However, that encompasses the emotional and the spiritual side as well.

She Loves The Gloves: It’s fascinating to actually hear this coming from the head of one of the most successful teams in the game. But another thing that people in MMA love to argue about is this notion of the G.O.A.T. So, who would you say is your personal greatest of all time?

Bareman: For me it’s Khabib [Nurmagomedov].

She Loves The Gloves: Really? Because of the sheer domination?

Bareman: Not only. He just had everything that I look for in a fighter. Sure, he was dominant. But I also admired his ability to take the fight wherever he wanted to take the fight. One of the biggest things about his career is that he managed to come up with a style where he’d absorb very little damage. He could go into the ring and come out of it relatively unscathed. In addition to this, he’s one of the few athletes who managed to leave the sport on top. From all my years of being involved in martial arts, I know that it’s the most difficult thing to do.

She Loves The Gloves: Yeah, I guess Khabib and GSP are the only examples of this that come to mind when you think of high-level MMA…

Bareman: Because it’s incredibly hard to do. Given the financial stability that they have been able to achieve — it’s amazing. But just to go through the career and come out of it relatively undamaged, yet alone undefeated… It’s an incredible feat that could only be achieved by an incredible fighter.

She Loves The Gloves: I’m glad you mentioned Khabib’s style because one of my questions is actually about it. First Khabib, then Islam, and now almost in every weight class we have a Dagestani athlete that wreaks havoc on the rest of the division. What makes the “Dagestani style” so effective?

Bareman: Look — when I was just getting into this sport many years ago — I came from a kickboxing background, then I started doing jiu-jitsu and got into MMA. In those early days I figured out that the goal always was to get in and get out, while inflicting as much damage on the other person and receiving as little as possible in return. That’s what they call ‘The Art of Fighting’. And there was already some form or fashion of that in stand-up disciplines: being elusive, moving, boxing smart. But I had discovered that MMA offered an even better solution: take the guy down, keep him down and stay on top — because this way the relative damage you are able to receive from the opponent is significantly minimized. When I’m standing up in boxing, no matter how good my defense is, I can still be hit with a big shot. But when I’m on top of someone, they can’t really generate the same amount of power off of their back. So after realizing this, I’ve put all my attention into controlling people: taking them down, taking their backs, etc.

She Loves The Gloves: Which is ironic, since the majority of your best fighters are considered to be - first and foremost - elite strikers.

Bareman: Well, for me, this was the ultimate style. This was the style that I chose for myself. This is why I have so much admiration for Khabib, and why I think his team is so successful.

Now, fast forward to today. When, as a coach, you start to train fighters that are aiming for the UFC, you have to approach things differently. The sport today isn’t the pure form of MMA that I’ve competed in. The rules haven’t really changed but the game has. In this realm that’s very particular to the UFC, you just can’t advance your career like this — it’s just a fact. It’s a sport of fighting but also a sport of entertainment. And so I had to change my entire philosophy, my entire approach because I had to look at the reality that was in front of me. My job as a coach is to help fighters make as much money as they can in an extremely short career span of a professional combat athlete. They need to support their families, secure their financial future - at the end of the day, this is prize fighting. So I had to change my entire approach to accommodate this. And, as a result, I’ve been able to get people to the title in 1/3 of the time that it took, say, Khabib or Islam. This way they don’t spend the majority of their careers trying to get to the title -instead, they capture it quickly and spend the majority of their career defending it.

She Loves The Gloves: To clarify for the reader - this is because the majority of top UFC fighters make most of their money in title bouts, when they get PPV points and sometimes even improved contracts?

Bareman: Precisely. I just had to be realistic: coming up with the best style for minimizing risk was one thing. But maximizing your earning potential and ensuring that your family’s future is taken care of after you’re done fighting is a completely different conversation. There are other factors, of course. For example we’re not a nation of people that get on a wrestling mat when we’re 5. We’re a nation of people that start punching each other in the face when we’re 5. So that’s the cultural aspect. But philosophically, this was the adjustment that I had to make as a coach who has his team’s best interest at heart.

She Loves The Gloves: What were some of the specific changes that you had to make to achieve this?

Bareman: I really doubled down on the art of fighting on the feet. We had to be exciting, and for the majority of fans it means a stand-up fight. So we had to keep it on the feet. The question was: how do I get the boys to not be taken down but also not to get them knocked out? So we doubled down on all the little strategies and skills that would help us with that: wrestling defense, scrambles…

She Loves The Gloves: Feinting?

Bareman: The feinting and the way we move, yes.

She Loves The Gloves: The feinting aspect is particularly fascinating to me. It seemed to appear as if from nowhere, yet brought your relatively small team such success that it basically changed the entire development course of modern MMA. Before, say, Volkanovski or Izzy, very few used feints to this extent. Yet now it has become something of an artform that much bigger teams try to learn from you guys.

Bareman: Well, I think feinting has been around from the dawn of time. All CKB did was help popularize it. Every fighter that comes out of our gym has this as a staple in their fighting style. And I think that every fighter in general should have this as a staple part of their style. So, maybe we just put more attention on it and it forced the others to do the same.

She Loves The Gloves: I think what sets you guys apart is the fact that you’re just so effective with it! Anyhow. We did briefly mention Volkanovski, so let’s continue with him. I know that these days he mostly trains in Australia . Does he still conduct his fight camps at CKB, though?

Bareman: In recent years my input into working with Volkanovski has been mostly about gameplaning. I still corner him but he doesn’t come here as often as he used to. With his children and other obligations, his life has gotten too busy. So I analyze his sparring footage, I analyze his opponents, a lot of our guys go to train with him and help him prepare, rather than it being the opposite way. This is all a part of the financial freedom that I’ve mentioned above. Now he doesn’t have to leave his family — he can just fly his training partners over and provide them with accommodations, instead of having to come here.

She Loves The Gloves: One can only imagine the amount of comfort this has given him, with the insanely active fight schedule that he likes to keep. But let’s address the elephant in the room: in less than a month, one of your athletes will compete against the representative of my country of Georgia — Ilia Topuria. This is our first chance at UFC gold, which means a lot for a small country like ours…

Bareman: What’s your population?

She Loves The Gloves: 3.5 million — give or take.

Bareman: Oh, wow, you’re even smaller than New Zealand. Of course, the significance makes sense.

She Loves The Gloves: I understand that, as a coach, you won’t be able to tell me everything. But could you share at least a little of what you think of this fight, and of Topuria — what are his main strengths and weaknesses?

Bareman: First of all, Ilia is a brilliant fighter. And one thing that these brilliant fighters have in common is that they develop a style that works for them and is built around their strengths. The interesting thing for me is that he arrived in the UFC as a high-level BJJ black belt, so the rhetoric was always about not letting him take you down. However, as his career progressed, he’s now almost exclusively talked about as a striker. So he has a very good ground game, but he’s also a very powerful man. His right hand and left hook are in the top of the division. But what’s important is that he fights according to his strengths, and that’s a credit to his coaches that have developed a game that’s built around him and what he’s good at.

She Loves The Gloves: Oh, come on! You gotta give me more than that!

Bareman: Alright (laughs out loud). I’ll be honest: at the end of the day, when you analyze a fighter, you can see thousands of things that you could potentially take advantage of. And he and his coaches do the same. What both teams are trying to do is to narrow these down to little traits and tendencies that you can capitalize on, that will give you the ‘biggest bang for your buck’. But, like in every fight, there will be some things that seem like they could potentially create openings for Volk but won’t be there during the fight. However, we’re still gonna test them. And if they’re not there, we’ll need to have other options. That’s the basic philosophy of fighting: once you mitigate one risk, another one is created. It’s the never-ending challenge. The important thing is that if something you’ve prepared for isn’t there on fight night, it doesn’t mean that your preparation has failed — it just means that now it has created another opening and another direction for you to capitalize on. And our job as a team is to be prepared not only for the first, but the second tier of openings. I think this is where we actually excel as a team — not only planning for these things but also having fighters that can take advantage of them and execute accordingly.

She Loves The Gloves: Listening to this is a bit mind-blowing as I start to better understand why Volk’s third fight with Max Holloway looked the way that it did… and how your team managed to solve and adapt to him so well. Because in the third fight there was a very noticeable difference in the effectiveness of your game plans.

Bareman: Three fights — three different game plans, I can tell you that much. This is why rematches are good but the so-called rubber matches are difficult. You can have a fighter lose, then win the rematch, but in the next fight it’s going to be very difficult to be successful. At that point you just have so much information on your opponent that it’s going to be hard to make a mistake in the game plan. No matter how good you are at gameplanning, there’s an element of taking your best guess on some things. So, if in the first and the second match the game plan is mostly built around guessing, by the time you get to the third one, you pretty much know everything your opponent can do. So it often goes in the direction of complete domination of one of the teams. I felt like whatever happened to Max could happen to us, because he also has a very good team and you could count on them to come up with a good strategy. The other option was us doing the same to him. In my experience, it’s always one of these extremes that happen in the third fight. Luckily for us, we were on the winning side of things.

She Loves The Gloves: Which is surprising, because most viewers probably expected the third fight to be as close as the first two.

Bareman: It’s the logical expectation, but in my experience, it’s almost always one of these opposites.

She Loves The Gloves: But would this same logic apply to Izzy’s and Alex’s MMA trilogy, if it ever happens? Or is it irrelevant because they have had those kickboxing fights in the past?

Bareman: Oh, those two are in a completely different realm. They are in a very difficult, unenviable position where, if they do end up fighting again, they will have to put all their respective firepower against each other and see who comes out on top.

She Loves The Gloves: But, on the other hand, what a thrilling story this rivalry has given us!

Bareman: It’s an amazing story! I never in a million years thought that Alex Pereira would make it to the UFC. And I wasn’t basing this on his fighting skills, I guess I just never really thought of this as a possibility. A career in kickboxing is not as financially rewarding. Just like Alex, Izzy started with nothing and struggled. So at the end of the day, Israel and I, we always knew we were going in the direction of the UFC. I just never thought that Alex was thinking the same.

But Israel made it to the top of the UFC and became a massive star. At the same time, Alex was still struggling in kickboxing. He saw what Israel had achieved and probably thought to himself: why can’t I do that? So he takes inspiration from Izzy and not only goes for it, but comes up with the perfect strategy to do so: he rides on the back of what Israel has done and chases him to the UFC. There’s no way he could have advanced his MMA career this fast otherwise.

She Loves The Gloves: Well, I don’t think anyone would argue with that. To fight for the title in your 4-th UFC fight today is just unheard of!

Bareman: But it’s amazing how many things needed to fall into place for this story to develop the way that it did. If Israel doesn’t become this massive superstar, the Alex Pereira story largely doesn’t exist… Well, actually you can’t say that. Alex is a phenomenal athlete and, who knows, maybe he’d still achieve whatever he achieved in a more conventional way. But you know what usually happens — the UFC like to test fighters coming from the kickboxing background by matching them up with wrestlers. Either way, it’s a fact that Alex’s way to the title would be very different without his story with Israel. But, instead, he fought three unimpressive fighters — well, two unimpressive fighters and Sean Strickland (laughs). Then he gets a chance to fight Adesanya and knocks him out in the last round to become champion. He’s our rival, of course, but taking my own ego out of it — what he was able to achieve is nothing short of amazing. You can’t write a better story than that!

She Loves The Gloves: But I feel like this also created an incredible chapter in Israel’s story and helped elevate him as an athlete. I was paying close attention to your preparations for that second MMA fight and know that you went through a particularly grueling fight camp. What did it feel like to finally defeat Alex Pereira?

Bareman: Well, I always thought we had a better fighter. But that’s not what the results showed. And that’s what is so great about our sport: you can (arguably) have a better fighter but when someone has such an insane power, like Pereira, they can still knock you out. And then you can’t say that you’re the better fighter because then the argument is that if you really were better, you should have been able to avoid the knockout punch. Regardless, I thought that we had a better fighter but our execution in the key moments of previous fights wasn’t right. So, even after all these losses, we went into the camp with supreme confidence. We knew we could do it, because for the majority of our previous fights we were in complete control. We just knew that our preparation and execution in this second MMA fight had to be perfect. And we managed to do that.

She Loves The Gloves: But, as it often happens in life, the biggest triumph is followed by a fall… I know you’ve already talked about the loss to Sean Strickland immediately after the fight. In fact, I think you were the one who mostly talked to the press and largely sheltered Israel from the fallout, which I thought was very admirable. But now, reflecting on that fight 4 months later, what do you think went wrong?

Bareman: I’ll try to be careful as I answer this question, as we ideally would like to rematch Sean in the future. And we’d rather this future wasn’t too distant. I think the most important thing that people need to understand and decide for themselves is the following: was the reason for Strickland’s success something that Sean did, or was it what Israel didn’t do?

As a team, we know what happened. Luckily, Israel Adesanya has had over 100 professional fights in his career. Of course, no two opponents are the same, but Israel has faced all kinds of strikers in the past. And some of them had a style that was similar to Sean Strickland’s — not identical, but similar. All you need to do is have a look at those fights, how Israel was able to perform, and what the end result was.

We can sit here and talk about Sean Strickland’s magic skills and never-before-seen gameplan… Or we can take a different approach and ask the right questions. In the end, everyone has got their own truth and it’s up to the fans to decide whose version to accept and believe. As a couch, I would personally like a rematch. I would like to have a chance to prove that we can beat any style and that Sean Strickland is not some kind of a magical fighter. He’s a good fighter, but nothing he did in that cage was what we hadn’t seen before. I think it will be clear in the rematch that there were other factors in that first fight that have affected its outcome. However, now there is an interesting story and an intriguing aspect for the fans to tune in for the second match.

She Loves The Gloves: I’d like for us to briefly touch on those factors. Would it be correct to assume that, with Israel’s somewhat unparalleled activity as a champion (10 championship fights in 4 years), he simply got burned out?

Bareman: No, Israel can’t get burned out fighting three or four times a year. The issue is what’s happening between these fights. In my opinion, as a professional athlete, Israel didn’t do what he needed to do between those fights to not be burned out. In order to remain a champion, at the highest level of our sport, you have to live a certain lifestyle, a lifestyle that reinvigorates you. You have to be focused on your goals in the four to six months between now and your next fight, instead of waiting for the UFC to call with a specific opponent to start the preparation. Israel will probably disagree with this and argue with me — he does that a lot — but I’m usually the one who’s right. (laughs)

She Loves The Gloves: I honestly love the dynamic between the two of you! So, for you personally, would you prefer a rematch with Sean rather than, say, a fresher matchup like Dricus Du Plesis?

Bareman: Personally, I’d prefer the Strickland rematch. I’m sure Israel would also like to get that one back. There’s a story there, it’s intriguing. And now, after that loss, I feel like there is something that we need to prove. Not so much to others — to ourselves.

She Loves The Gloves: Yeah, I understand. What do you think about this upcoming match between Strickland and Du Plesis? Who would you pick as your favorite?

Bareman: I’d probably go with Sean. But it’s easier for me to talk about athletes that we’ve analyzed and prepared for in the past. In regards to DDP, I can say that he’s very physical, as well as awkward. He has a very strange rhythm to his fighting. A lot of coaches would try to fix this awkwardness and get him to fight in a more conventional way, but, luckily, his team managed to build a style around it and use it as a weapon instead. Kind of like what I mentioned when talking about Topuria.

She Loves The Gloves: I would actually like for us to come back to that part…

Bareman: I didn’t give you much there, did I? (laughs)

She Loves The Gloves: Well, just how big of a role do you think Volk’s second fight with Islam will have on the February’s match with Ilia? If Ilia wins, I’d hate for the narrative to be about the knockout loss to Islam.

Bareman: I never really looked at that second Islam fight seriously. I was against Volk taking that fight and was very open about it.

She Loves The Gloves: Really? Because I actually thought that if anyone could beat Islam on such short notice, it would be Volk…

Bareman: Listen, Volkanovski is a great fighter, but you have to maintain some level of rationale. You trained for 12 weeks for the first fight and, yes, there’s an argument that you won. But the result was different, right? In the end the fact is that whatever you did in those 12 weeks wasn’t enough to get the win on judges’ scorecards. It’s unrealistic to expect that you can deliver better results with a week of preparation. And maybe if the circumstances were different, I’d have a different opinion.

She Loves The Gloves: By circumstances you mean the birth of a new baby and Volk’s hand surgery?

Bareman: Not only. He was out camping when he received the call from the UFC. He was somewhere in a caravan, in the woods — nowhere close to the gym. Which is very rare for Alex, because he is almost always training and in shape.

She Loves The Gloves: Were things different, do you think he’d have a chance to beat Islam on a short-notice?

Bareman: He would have a chance, of course. Even if he was in the gym 3–4 times a week as he regularly is, things would be completely different. And I’m not even talking about ‘the fight camp shape’, when he’s in the gym 5 times a week or more. But with everything that was going on before that fight in Abu-Dhabi, I didn’t think he had a chance. Especially not against Islam, who — as I mentioned earlier — I believe has the ultimate style for MMA.

The biggest tragedy for me personally is that I strongly believed that with a proper preparation for the rematch, we could show an even better performance than we did in the first fight. And I really wanted us to have that chance — with a proper camp. So the biggest tragedy for me is that we will never get an opportunity to face Islam again. That’s what I’m gutted about. But I also understand why Alex accepted the fight.

She Loves The Gloves: He thought it was going to be his ‘Michael Bisping’ moment?

Bareman: Not really. Everyone has their own reasons for fighting but there’s one recurring theme — this is how fighters support their families and their future. I’m not sure if this was widely publicized but Alex did sign a new contract with that last fight. So it wasn’t about just getting one big payday. It was about all his future fights happening with significantly — significantly — better compensation. So, from this point of view, his decision was understandable.

She Loves The Gloves: So you agreed with his decision from the financial standpoint, but not the competitive?

Bareman: Precisely. From a competitive standpoint I told him ‘forget it’. Yes, of course, we as a team will do our best to use this time and get you as prepared as one can be on a week’s notice. But realistically, we don’t have much of a chance. But if the UFC offers you, say, this, this, or this — sure, think about it and maybe we can figure something out. I’ll watch the tape and design the game plan that would give us the best chance of getting the win.

And so that’s what happened. The UFC came back with a good offer and he agreed. But I didn’t even have the time to get to Abu-Dhabi and corner him. It all happened so fast, I had prior commitments that I couldn’t just cancel. I didn’t even watch the fight — I was too scared of what could happen.

She Loves The Gloves: Well, arguably, the worst possible thing happened…

Bareman: Yeah, I had a feeling it could be something like this. I obviously didn’t want to be right, but unfortunately, I was. Once again, in different circumstances I really believe that even on a short-notice the result may have been different. But of course, we have to also give credit to Islam — his skills are outstanding and he deserved that win.

However, I’m glad that chapter is now over and we can focus on future challenges — like Topuria, for example.

She Loves The Gloves: Do you think enough time will have passed from that knockout for Volkanovski to be fully prepared for February?

Bareman: I think so. Alex’s medical results came back very positive, he knows what he needs to do to get himself in the best shape possible, and he’s doing it.

But, in all honesty, both Volk and Izzy right now are fighting a battle against their most dangerous opponent — time. Israel has just entered this stage of his life recently, but Volk has been fighting this war for a while now. I have spent enough time in this sport to know that everything can change in a moment: one day you’re 35 years old but you fight as if you’re 25. The next day you wake up and your age suddenly becomes evident in all aspects of your game. You can’t run from it. And no amount of chasing and tapping flashing lights or any of those fancy speed and reflex exercises will change this. You can only try to slow this process down. Not by what you do in the octagon, but by what you have been doing outside of it for the past years — with your lifestyle, rest, recovery, and all that.

Both Israel Adesanya and Alexander Volkanovski are great fighters. But this is the battle neither of them can win. It’s inevitable and we know it will happen one day. We just don’t know when exactly — this is something that only the future can tell.

She Loves The Gloves: Eugene, I can’t thank you enough for this interview. I am sure the audience has received an enormous amount of new information from this — I certainly have. However, I can’t let you go without an official prediction for Volkanovski-Topuria. Who wins and how?

Bareman: I think Volkanovski wins by decision. Ilia is a phenomenal fighter and his time will come. But February 17th will still belong to Alexander Volkanovski.

(Original article published on Jan 19, 2024)