Coach of the year

In the recent Halberg awards, Eugene Bareman missed out on coach of the year. In my opinion, I think the award should’ve been his. What he has achieved as a sports coach in New Zealand stands out among coaches.

The coach that did win the award was Noeline Taurua, who is an amazing coach. She took the Sunshine Coast Lightning to back-to-back Australian titles in the team’s first years of operation. Then after the worst result the NZ netball team had at the Commonwealth Games, getting 4 th , Taurua was given the role as head coach. She took the team from the worst result in their history to the heights of winning the Netball world championships. The NZ team has won the World Championships 5 times, but had not won it since 2003. The job that Taurua did in turning this team around was amazing, but I still think that Eugene Bareman should’ve won coach of the year.

Eugene Bareman is the MMA coach at City Kickboxing in Auckland, and they are so far ahead of any other MMA gym in NZ. So far ahead in fact, they were ranked the #1 MMA gym on the planet last year (MMA Junkie.com). There have been a couple of gyms in NZ that have produced fighters that have reached the UFC. Then there are a couple of kiwis that have got to the UFC via Australian gyms. But going back a few years, it was common knowledge that if you wanted to get to the top in MMA, you needed to get overseas and train at one of the big gyms. Then Bareman took that idea and threw it out the window. Not only has he produced a UFC fighter, he has 6 UFC fighters training under him, two of whom have UFC titles. Israel Adesanya has trained under Bareman for his entire career and has done some amazing things. Then last year he continued his undefeated run in MMA to a title shot for the UFC Middleweight Title and won via KO. Alexander Volkanovski thought training at City Kickboxing looked like a good idea. Although living in Australia, Volkanovski had a few fight camps out of City Kickboxing. Last year Volkanovski won the UFC featherweight title. No other gym in NZ has had more than 2 fighters reach the UFC yet Bareman has two UFC champions training under him.

Taurua took a team from the depths and returned them to their former glory and won coach of the year. My argument, however, is that Bareman smashed what was considered possible in the NZ MMA scene. City Kickboxing has only lost one fight in the UFC, considering that just getting to the UFC from NZ was considered a big deal then have 6 fighters ripping it up was something that would not have even been a thought a few years ago. Eugene Bareman has progressed his sport more than any other coach in NZ did for their sport in 2019. Bareman is also lightyears ahead of any other MMA coach in NZ in terms of results. In my view, taking a sport to heights that have not been seen before in NZ is more important than taking a team back to the heights of the past.

If MMA was a minor sport that people did not know about then I could understand the decision a little more, but MMA is one of the most popular sports on the planet and everyone knows about it. MMA is 100% a mainstream sport and getting to the pinnacle (which is the UFC) is very hard, even the worst fighter in the UFC is going to kick your ass. For Bareman to get two UFC champions and prove to the world that you can reach the top from a tiny country in the Pacific. It just makes it hard to see how any coach deserves the best coach of the year ahead of Bareman after the new standard he has set in MMA in NZ.

Gareth Lewis
Head MMA Instructor