It would be difficult to overstate the extent to which the burly Brazilian is synonymous with the featherweight belt. There is a certain amount of round-robin parity; along with Freire, Pat Curran and Daniel Straus are both two-time champs, as they have snatched the belt from one another over and over again. However, “Pitbull” is the clear alpha dog here. In the entire history of the division, there have been 16 title fights, and Freire has been in 10 of them, going 8-2.
Before any of those gentlemen, however, there was Joe Soto, Bellator’s first featherweight champion. Soto was in fact the promotion’s first champ, period, preceding Hector Lombard and Lyman Good by a week. He and Joe Warren—who was a late starter in MMA and physically better suited to bantamweight—held down the fort until the triumvirate of Freire, Curran and Straus arrived. Now Freire sits atop the mountain, with worthy challengers such as previous challenger Emmanuel Sanchez, former bantamweight champ Darrion Caldwell and undefeated phenom A.J. McKee standing between him and the grand prix final.
Ben Duffy/Sherdog.com illustration