Patricio “Pitbull” Freire is the Bellator featherweight and lightweight Champion. Holding titles in MMA, let alone two divisions in a promotion like Bellator is no easy feat. However when his name was brought up to Dana White after last weekend’s UFC event in Las Vegas, White didn’t really have any thoughts on the dual Bellator MMA titleholder.
Freire took to Twitter to react to White’s lack of knowledge on the 33-year-old, 30-4 fighter. His post read, “Hi Dana White, I’m the one who destroyed steroids machine (sic) Michael Chandler who you said deserves a talk in 61 seconds.” Freire then went on to see if Dana White would match up the UFCs best fighters against Bellator’s best, similar to when White brought fighters into Pride Fighting Championship back in 2003.
Freire said if White matched him up with any of his best fighters he would, “do the same to them.” He also offered to wager one million dollars on himself that he could be White’s best. “How does that sound for an incentive?” Freire asked in his follow up post.
In 2003 White had entered Chuck Liddell in the Pride Grand Prix tournament with Liddell being the representative of the UFC. Liddell made it through the first round of the tournament by defeating Alistair Overeem, then lost to Quinton “Rampage” Jackson in the next round. Both of Liddell’s opponent’s made their careers in Pride before coming into the UFC.
While the UFC is considered the best promotion by many MMA fans because of their seniority and growth since then, the sport as a whole has a lot of talent that the casual UFC fan is unaware of. Fight fans could easily get on board for a Bellator versus UFC event but history has shown the UFC does not really cross-promote events.
How do you think Freire matches up to the UFC featherweights and lightweights?
