UFC 284 had left some fans divided opinion on how the main card should’ve been scored. But most spectators seem to agree that the fights mostly delivered. Alexander Volkanovski’s coach seems to consider Interim champion Yair Rodriguez a better opponent compared to Makhchev.
Speaking in a recent interview, Eugene Bareman said, “Go back to 145, obviously there is a fight sitting right there. I don’t know what Islam is doing, if he’s gonna fight soon, or if he is going to fight twice a year. I’m not sure what his plans are. We have a flight locked in if Alex wants to and it’s a very difficult fight, in many ways a much more difficult fight than the one we just had versus Yair so I think that’s a challenge. And I think he should probably take it.”
How right is Alexander Volkanovski’s coach about Islam Makhachev?
It’s hard to deny the strong start Yair had in his UFC career. Early in his career, he defeated the likes of Dan Hooker, Charles Rosa, Alex Caceres, and BJ Penn. The impressive 6-fight winning streak came to a staggering halt once he was scheduled to fight Frankie Edgar. El Pantera lost that fight via KO/TKO in the second round.
In his next fight, Rodriguez managed to defeat the Koren Zombie only to lose the later fight against Jeremy Stephens. The match against Jeremy was avenged but the biggest challenge of his life was coming up. Max Holloway was supposed to be one of the biggest challenges in Yair’s career but the Mexican got outclassed.
His fight against Brian Ortega also didn’t receive a proper conclusion as ‘T-city’ was injured. While the recent win against Josh Emmett was commendable, that does not compare to Islam Makhcehv’s career which only has 1 loss. While Yair has lost to a lot of the big names he faced, Makhachev did not.
In our opinion, Eugene is making these comparisons out of dissatisfaction with the UFC 284 main event.
