Patricio ‘Pitbull’ Freire aims to cap storied career with UFC run

Yair Rodriguez is as close as it gets to a UFC lifer. After debuting on the Mexican regional circuit as a teenager and fighting a remarkable nine times over his first two years in the sport, the athletic, improvisational striker entered the orbit of MMA’s largest promoter at 21, winning the first Latin American edition of The Ultimate Fighter.

That was all the way back in 2014. Still only 32, Rodriguez’s career has spanned UFC eras, as he holds pre-pandemic wins over retired legends such as BJ Penn and Chan Sung Jung, and post-COVID victories over currently ranked contenders Brian Ortega and Josh Emmett. In 2019, he beat Jeremy Stephens, who left the company two years later, spent nearly four years hopping around other promotions, and has now found his way back in UFC. Name a notable UFC featherweight of the last decade and you can connect Rodriguez to them.

Patricio “Pitbull” Freire? Different story. He’ll make his promotional debut this Saturday at UFC 314 — in a main card fight against Rodriguez — as a 37-year-old, having built one of the sport’s most impressive, decorated, and underappreciated legacies as the face of since-defunct Bellator MMA. He is unquestionably one of the best fighters in the world never to set foot in a UFC octagon. Perhaps the best.

The question now, as he attempts one last sprint to a title after a bitter falling-out with the rival company he pioneered, is what he has left. His career greatness is incontestable, but it’s been over a year since we’ve seen him fight and you’d be hard-pressed to find another athlete who could rival him in sheer late-career mileage while regularly headlining cards in title fights.

Freire’s total fight time from the beginning of 2022 through his most recent bout in March 2024 is nearly two hours. For some fighters, that’s a career. Freire did it after his 35th birthday, with 37 professional fights already under his belt. Seeing him make the walk on a UFC pay-per-view will be an awesome sight in and of itself for MMA purists who have followed his storied career. But has he made the jump too late to show a new, far-broader audience what made him so great?

In his prime, Freire carried an immense amount of power at 145 pounds, making the most of a dense, thick-legged five-foot-six frame. That’s what you’ll see in his most widespread highlights, such as his flash knockdown of Michael Chandler with a right hook to the side of the head and one-shot knockouts of Diego Nunes and Daniel Weichel with tight lefts while withstanding pressure.

But he’d snatch your neck with a quickness, too. That’s what Henry Corrales learned when he kicked Freire out of his guard and promptly scrambled his way into an arm-in guillotine that produced a near instantaneous tap. Same goes for Daniel Straus, whose tap was just as quick when he was pulled into a tight guillotine after overextending himself just a touch while countering.

Freire’s vast experience manifests itself in patience and poise, as he often lets challengers lead fights while hanging out just beyond their reach, looking to time entries with explosive counters. When he gets that timing right, Freire creates punishing collisions, leveraging his opponent’s forward momentum as they run right into his fists. When he gets it wrong, he’s liable to eat some shots. But that isn’t a result he seems to mind much as he calmly circles out and resets.

That mettle ought to come in handy against Rodriguez, who seeks to scramble opponents with varied, unpredictable attacks. Some of his best moments in the octagon have been the result of unorthodox techniques that catch fighters with shots they don’t see coming. But there’s little that Freire, who won his first Bellator title before Rodirguez even made his UFC debut, hasn’t seen before.

After entering Bellator in 2010, Freire went 24-6, won a pair of tournaments, enjoyed three featherweight title reigns, and became the company’s second double champion when he knocked out Chandler in 2019 to take his lightweight belt.

A 2021 loss to AJ McKee, who dropped Freire and finished him with a first-round guillotine as he attempted to defend his featherweight title a sixth time, was thought to be a passing of the torch from one era to another. But a then 34-year-old Freire returned in April 2022 to reclaim his belt and halt the 26-year-old McKee’s perfect record in a razor-thin, tactical, back-and-forth affair. Then, as if he was forcing time backwards, Freire ran off two more wins before the end of the year.

Yet that’s when things started to get weird. In an admirable-yet-ultimately-ill-advised attempt to move down to bantamweight and win a title in a third division, Freire sacrificed both speed and power advantages, making a dramatic cut to challenge a much-younger, true-135er and dropped a lop-sided five-rounder to Sergio Pettis in June 2023.

Then, only six weeks later, he was steamrolled by Chihiro Suzuki in a four-days-notice, 153-pound catchweight bout on the opposite side of the world in Japan. Freire fought only once more with Bellator — defending his featherweight title in a late-booked fight with an inexperienced and outgunned Jeremy Kennedy following a series of scrapped bouts — before entering a lengthy, public dispute with the promotion and its parent company, PFL, over a lack of bookings that resulted in his release early this year.

Add it all up and Freire’s career has been a perplexing, wayward journey for the last 24 months. This isn’t how anyone wanted to see Bellator’s greatest fighter, the holder of just about every record that matters in the company, go out. Even thinking more broadly, a fighter this underappreciated by casual fans deserved better.

Maybe a spirited UFC run can rectify the situation. Chandler’s proven that with the right panache one doesn’t even have to win fights to win fans. There’s an opportunity here for the promotion to get behind Freire, tell his great story, and capitalize on what he has left to give. Freire’s certainly eager to fight, and ought to be active if he doesn’t suffer any significant injuries. And he’s been given a name-brand booking in a prominent position on a pay-per-view. The matchmakers have done their part.

Can Freire still do his? In any fighter’s late 30s, it’s asking a lot. Rodriguez feels like he’s been around forever but he’s still a half-decade younger than Freire, who hasn’t fought in a year. Declines are precipitous in MMA. And Freire carries as much mileage as anyone going.

The clock is certainly ticking. It’s no coincidence that UFC booked Freire’s debut on the same card as one fight for the vacant featherweight title and another featuring his longtime rival Chandler, who defeated his brother, Patricky, twice in Bellator. Freire has two paths to travel coming out of UFC 314. And whichever he ends up on, it ought to happen quickly.

Earn a stoppage or firm decision against Rodriguez — currently the featherweight’s No. 5 ranked fighter — and Freire could be elevated directly into a title fight with the winner of Saturday’s main event. Lose and an all-action rematch with Chandler is right there.

It’s not like Freire’s in for a long UFC stay. He fought in Bellator for 14 years and he’ll turn 38 in July. It’s extremely rare to see fighters this seasoned hang around the top of lighter-weight divisions. Alex Volkanovski’s whole shtick of late has been mocking his own relatively advanced age. He’s starred in commercials about it. And he’s a year younger than Freire.

Considering the 13 months he just spent — some might say wasted — sidelined while trying to force Bellator to give him either a fight or a way out of his contract, you can bet Freire’s eager to make up for lost time. Many may see the UFC as an end for Freire’s storied career. But you can bet he sees it as a new beginning.

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