The Bellator featherweight title has been changing hands a lot as of late, and the newly minted title holder is Patricio “Pitbull” Freire. Pitbull won the belt via unanimous decision against bitter rival and former champion Pat Curran last weekend at Bellator 123.
Now that he is the champion, Pitbull recently opened up explaining that his latest training camp was one of his worst he has ever had and he nearly pulled out of the fight due to an injury sustained at a Bellator promo shoot.
“I was in New York for a Bellator photo shoot and they asked me to throw some flying knees, but I was landing on the concrete. I did it 30 times, and ended up injuring my meniscus,” Pitbull told MMAFighting.com. “I couldn’t train. I went to the doctor and he said I couldn’t fight. Bellator took me to another doctor and he said the same thing, so I canceled the fight. I forgot about my diet, forgot about the fight.”
Although Pitbull apparently called off the fight, Bellator asked him to reconsider and Pitbull decided to go through with it. At the end of the day, Pitbull realized that all fighters will have injuries going into fights and he was as ready as he could ever be.
Obviously his performance was affected by the injury, but he did enough to leave the cage as the Bellator champion, and plans to stay the champion for years to come.
