Eugene Bareman isn’t fully supporting the recent allegations made against Islam Makhachev, but he’s also not happy with the current state of affairs either.
Dan Hooker, a teammate of Alexander Volkanovski’s from City Kickboxing, accused the lightweight champion of using an IV to illegally rehydrate before his champion-versus-champion fight with Volkanovski following Makhachev’s victory over Volkanovski this past weekend at UFC 284. IVs were formerly often used to speed up weight loss recovery, but after a rule change in 2016, their use has been severely limited.
According to USADA regulations, IV infusions and/or injections that total more than 100 ml within a 12-hour period are now forbidden.
Coach Eugene Bareman recently appeared on The MMA Hour, where he talked about the recent IV accusations at UFC 284.
“We have reliable information to a point,” Bareman said when asked about Hooker’s accusation. “I will half plead the fifth. Can you half plead the fifth? The two and a half? The information falls short because for several reasons, and one of them is that you can actually take an IV before a fight. It just has to be 100 ml of saline every 12 hours, in a 12-hour block. So what it has to come down to is whether you believe that people are going to take this saline, 100 ml, and then stop.
“And the fact that from that team there were two fighters from that same team and the information can’t reliably tell us yet which fighter illegally hydrated or whether they went over 100 ml. But I don’t know, no information can tell us without a doubt that someone in their team used an IV badge to rehydrate, which is not illegal if you used 100 ml. You’ve just got to ask yourself if it’s only 100 ml you’ve got to use for 12 hours, why would you even bother?”
Eugene Bareman advised Dan Hooker against making such accusations
After the fight, Dan Hooker went on a twitter rant against Islam Makhachev and accused him of using IV. However, Eugene Bareman advised Dan Hooker to not talk about it without concrete proof.
“I advised Dan against even talking about it,” Eugene Bareman said. “Look, as you can see, that information has holes in it, that’s what I’m alluding to, but also there’s enough information there for to be like, ‘Eeeh…’ This is why Alex and the rest of the team are laughing because we’re like, something’s going on there, we just can’t reliably say what it is.
“It’s frustrating because the whole sport should be played on an even playing field. Then again, you can’t reliably say that Islam cheated, so I wouldn’t go out there and say that in the manner that Dan did. That’s just—I don’t think you can reliable say that. But something was going on there.” (H/T – MMAFighting.com)
Do you guys think Islam Makhachev took IV in his fight against Alexander Volkanovski? Let us know in the comment section below.
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