Eugene Bareman didn't have much downtime after Junior Fa's heavyweight defeat to Joseph Parker on Saturday night, with the Kiwi trainer putting his UFC hat back on and heading to the US the day after.
Bareman spoke to 1 NEWS at Auckland Airport last night after the boxing event before he and his City Kickboxing fighters — including UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya — flew to Los Angeles for next weekend's UFC 259 in Las Vegas.
"I don't have a problem with switching codes. It's more that last night was a late night so I'm still catching up on my sleep, but I've got a big plane ride to catch up on my sleep after last night's flight," Bareman said.
Bareman has spent the last few months helping train Fa for his heavyweight boxing bout with Parker, a fight which resulted in a unanimous decision win for the former WBO champion despite a respectable performance from Fa, while also trying to prepare his MMA fighters for their next appearances.
The biggest of those comes next weekend with Adesanya taking on Jan Blachowicz for the UFC's light heavyweight championship, with the Nigerian-born Kiwi having a chance to become the UFC's fifth "champ champ" — a fighter who holds titles in two weight divisions simultaneously.
Joining Adesanya, though, is CKB teammates Kai Kara-France and Carlos Ulberg, who will fight on the preliminary cards.
Bareman told 1 NEWS while he was focused on Fa's preparation for the last few months, he's also been keeping the trio in shape for this weekend's event.
"It's a bit of a juggling act but it's a juggling act me and my coaches have done for years," Bareman said.
"We have multiple disciplines at the gym, all competing at a really high level so switching from sport to sport, code to code, we do pretty seamlessly just through experience.
"I'm not going to say it wasn't tough — having two big fights so close to each other definitely pushed us mentally and physically, but we felt we've done a good job.
"Now we've just got to finish it."
Bareman added his fighters were totally on board with his focus on Fa too, including making the sacrifice to have a short camp in the US so he could be with Fa on Saturday night.
"We were willing to sacrifice those couple of days so I could be with Junior and then the boys opted to stay in New Zealand so they could support Junior too — it was fantastic.
"We felt that that was a sacrifice worth making."
SHARE ME