Jose Aldo wants the UFC to cut Movsar Evloev if he loses on Saturday in Abu Dhabi. The man whose job is to beat Evloev thinks that’s nonsense, and I’m with the guy holding the mitts.
Eugene Bareman, Alexander Volkanovski’s head coach at City Kickboxing, sat down with She Loves The Gloves ahead of UFC 333 and did something you rarely see from the opposing corner a few days out. He defended the challenger. He did it by pointing at the exact fighter everyone uses as the measuring stick for elite grappling, Islam Makhachev, and explaining why Evloev doesn’t fit that mold at all.
The Hugging Myth
The knock on Evloev has been the same for years. He’s undefeated, he doesn’t finish people, and he wins by lying on top of you until the horn. Aldo is only the loudest recent voice, and as Bloody Elbow noted, he’s far from the first fighter to take shots at the Russian’s style. Evloev, for his part, has credited educated fans for keeping him on the roster, which is about as polite a middle finger as you’ll ever hear.
Bareman says the casual read gets it backwards. In his view, Evloev has a unique style that people tend to misread, because he isn’t the type to grab control and simply hug his opponent. He keeps hitting.
“He always has some sort of blunt force trauma,” Bareman said. “He always has something hitting you. You can’t say that about someone like Islam [Makhachev] or Khabib [Nurmagomedov], who will spend long periods of time, like 45 seconds, a minute, holding you. Movsar will always release and punch and it’s almost constant.”
That’s a fascinating thing to say out loud. Khabib and Islam are the gold standard of Dagestani top control, and nobody calls them boring because they end fights. Islam is a real submission threat, now holding the welterweight belt. Khabib held people down like he was paying rent on their chest. Bareman’s point is that, minute for minute, Evloev is the guy throwing more leather in those positions, even if the leather doesn’t put people to sleep.
Death by a Thousand Punches
Bareman describes it as death by a thousand punches, and he thinks it’s deliberate. He acknowledged Evloev could sit down on heavier shots, but the volume serves a purpose. Constant output keeps referees from stepping in and standing the fight up. If you’re working, the ref has no excuse to reset. Bareman called it a brilliant strategy.
He’s right, and it’s the part fans miss when they yell lay and pray at the screen. Plenty of wrestlers have watched a ref split them up after 20 seconds of stalling. Evloev has figured out how to make the position stick by never giving the official a reason to intervene. That’s a skill. It’s a craft-nerd skill, sure, the kind that makes for a lousy highlight reel, but it’s a skill.
Here’s where I’ll push back on Evloev a little, because I’m not going to pretend the man is a must-see thrill ride. The fair criticism was never that he hugs people. The fair criticism is that his thousand punches rarely add up to a finish, and that’s a legit gripe for anyone paying for a pay-per-view. You can respect the engineering and still want a little more violence at the end of it.
Aldo’s Take Doesn’t Hold Up
But cutting an undefeated guy fighting for the title after his first loss? Come on. That’s the hottest of hot takes from a legend who should know better. If a challenger can lose a competitive five-rounder to Volkanovski and get shown the door, half the roster should start packing. The UFC isn’t exactly drowning in featherweights who make Volk’s coach nervous.
And Bareman sounds a little nervous, in the respectful way. Plenty of people are pointing to the success Volkanovski had against Makhachev in their first fight as the blueprint for Saturday. Bareman’s whole argument quietly undercuts that comparison. If Evloev isn’t fighting like Islam, then the Islam tape isn’t the cheat sheet everyone thinks it is.
His prediction tells you how seriously the camp is taking this. “I think Movsar’s going to be right there,” he said. “10-9, 10-9, 10-9, but only by the hair of it. I think just Movsar’s too good. He’s too good to pull away from, but we’re going to try.”
You don’t hear a coach talk like that when he expects his guy to run away with it. Bareman is bracing for 25 minutes of grinding, razor-thin rounds against a challenger he rates incredibly highly. Given Evloev’s history, if anybody gets a finish in this one, the smart money says it’s Volkanovski. Bareman isn’t even banking on that.
So here’s my take. The boring label on Evloev is lazy, and the coach with the most reason to trash him just explained why. If Evloev loses a close one on Saturday, the conversation should be about whether he can turn volume into finishes. If he wins, Aldo owes him a phone call, and the rest of the division owes him a lot more respect.
