Israel Adesanya leaves City Kickboxing and lands at Volkanovski's gym
Israel Adesanya leaves City Kickboxing, the gym that built his entire career, and has resurfaced on the other side of the Tasman Sea. The former middleweight champion, 24-6, announced the split from his coach Eugene Bareman in July after four straight losses. Weeks later he has been filmed training at Alexander Volkanovski’s Freestyle Fighting Gym in Australia, the first confirmed camp of his new chapter.
- Fight Hub
- 4 September 2026
Key takeaways
- Adesanya announced on July 9 that he was leaving City Kickboxing and head coach Eugene Bareman after 17 years, following four defeats in a row, the most recent a knockout by Joe Pyfer.
- He has now been seen training at Alexander Volkanovski's Freestyle Fighting Gym near Wollongong, his first publicly confirmed camp since the split.
- Volkanovski, 28-4, is preparing at the same gym for his UFC 333 title defence against Movsar Evloev (20-0) in late October; Mauricio Ruffy (14-2) is also in the room.
Adesanya leaves City Kickboxing after 17 years
A split he did not soften
Adesanya announced the move himself, on his YouTube channel on July 9, and he did not dress it up. He was direct about the conversation with the man who had coached him since the start. The decision closes a 17-year partnership that produced a two-division title challenger and one of the defining middleweight reigns of the era.
City Kickboxing was not just a gym for him. It was the room where he turned from a kickboxer into a UFC champion, under Eugene Bareman, alongside the teammates who cornered him through every title fight. Leaving it is the single biggest change he has made as a professional, and he made it in public.
The results that forced the question
The context is a four-fight losing run, the kind of stretch that ends careers or restarts them. The most recent loss was a knockout by Joe Pyfer, 16-3, and it was the one that made the status quo impossible to defend. Adesanya sits at 24-6, still one of the most accomplished strikers the division has seen, and now without the corner that guided all of it.
Why Volkanovski's gym is the reset
A different room, on purpose
The point of a move like this is the environment, not the postcode. Adesanya has surfaced at Freestyle Fighting Gym, Alexander Volkanovski’s base in the Wollongong area, south of Sydney. It is a smaller, quieter setup than the machine he came from, built around one elite fighter rather than a stable of them, and that contrast looks like the entire idea.
The timing helps. Volkanovski, 28-4, is deep in his own camp for a UFC 333 title defence against Movsar Evloev, 20-0, in late October, which means the gym is already running at championship intensity. Mauricio Ruffy, 14-2, is training there too. Adesanya arrives not as the star everyone builds around, but as another high-level body in someone else’s fight camp.
What actually changes for a striker of his level
Nobody relearns striking at 24-6; that is not what this is. What a fighter can change is who watches the tape, who calls the sparring, and which habits get challenged instead of protected. A camp that is not organised around him is a harder place to coast, and after four losses that may be exactly the correction he is looking for.
I spoke to Eugene face-to-face and told him I'm not coming back to CKB.
What comes next for Israel Adesanya
No fight, and no rush
There is no bout booked, and there is no reason to force one. Adesanya has nothing left to prove about his ceiling and everything to prove about whether he can still climb back toward it. The sensible version of this reboot is a full camp with the new team before a name is signed opposite him, so that the first fight of the Australia era is a fair test of the change and not a rushed one.
The harder truth is that the division did not wait for him. The middleweight picture has moved on, and a 24-6 former champion returning from a skid does not get gifted a short path back. He will have to earn the matchups that once came to him, and the first sign of whether the move worked will come long before any result, in how he looks when he next steps in to spar.
Follow the reboot with the data
Adesanya’s full record, his four-fight slide broken down opponent by opponent, and Volkanovski’s own run into UFC 333 are all in the FightHub app, updated as the camp news lands. Download it and track where the new chapter goes from here.
