Fast facts
- Division: Featherweight (No. 12 in the Knockout Daily rankings)
- Record: 38-9
- Nationality: Brazilian
- Team/gym: Pitbull Brothers
- Notable wins: Michael Chandler, A.J. McKee, Pat Curran, Daniel Straus, Kleber Koike Erbst, Dan Ige, Choi Doo-ho
On the outskirts of Natal, a 10-year-old boy walked into a jiu-jitsu class because people kept noticing how small he was, and he had decided he was done hearing about it. Patricio Freire is 39 now. He has held three Bellator featherweight titles and one lightweight belt, and he gave one of them away. This week Sherdog reported that he wants a title eliminator against Lerone Murphy. Three days earlier, in Abu Dhabi, Aaron Pico asked for Murphy too. Pico beat Freire in April.
Chute Boxe at 16
Freire, who fights as Patrício Pitbull, came up in the gyms of Natal before landing at the famous Chute Boxe academy as a teenager. He trained there alongside Wanderlei Silva and Mauricio Rua. That room was famous for being brutal, and it produced a kid who made his professional debut in March 2004 at 16. For five and a half years he fought only in Brazil and went 12-0, with 10 of those wins coming by stoppage. By the time Bellator called, he was considered one of the best prospects fighting outside North America.
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He never came up alone. His older brother Patricky is a lightweight, and the team on Freire’s record today carries both their names: Pitbull Brothers. Remember that when you get to 2021.
The long road to a belt
The Bellator years started with a heartbreak. Freire won his first two tournament fights in 2010, a first-round submission of Will Romero and a decision over former EliteXC champion Wilson Reis, then lost a split decision to Joe Warren in the final at Bellator 23. He had nearly finished Warren in the closing moments of Round 1.
He went back and won the Season Four tournament, knocking out Georgi Karakhanyan and Reis in the third round and outpointing Daniel Straus in the final. The prize was a rematch with Warren for the title. A broken hand in training wiped it out. He sat for almost a year and a half, came back at Bellator 85 in January 2013, and dropped another close split decision, this time to champion Pat Curran.
So he did it again. Season Nine: Jared Downing, Diego Nunes, Fabricio Guerreiro, Justin Wilcox, three of them finished. Then he got skipped for the title shot anyway. When the Curran rematch finally got booked, Curran hurt his calf. Freire won the belt by unanimous decision at Bellator 123 on Sept. 5, 2014, more than four years after his American debut. Plenty of fighters get a title shot off three wins and a viral clip. Freire won two tournaments and still had to wait.
Straus, Weichel and a broken shin
The first reign belongs to the Daniel Straus rivalry, which ran four fights. Freire choked him out with a rear-naked choke in Round 4 of their second meeting, then lost the belt to him by unanimous decision at Bellator 145 in November 2015 in a fight MMA Junkie ranked No. 3 on its Fight of the Year list. In April 2017 he took it back with a guillotine early in Round 2 and celebrated by jumping on the cage. That cost him $2,500.
In between came the fight that tells you most about him. Against Daniel Weichel at Bellator 138, he was knocked down in the final seconds of the first round. Early in the second, he caught Weichel with a counter left hook and knocked him out. Bleacher Report called it the Comeback of the Year.
Then there was the night he moved up to lightweight to get at Michael Chandler, who had knocked out Patricky. Benson Henderson checked a low kick with his knee in the first round of their Bellator 160 main event and broke Freire’s shin. Freire fought on until early in Round 2, when he stopped and told the referee about the leg.
His style comes out of those fights more than any highlight reel. Freire wins with his hands and he wins with chokes, the guillotine especially. In Bellator’s featherweight division he logged eight knockouts and five submissions. He also gets dropped, cut and dragged into deep water, and he keeps working anyway.
Two belts, and one handed back
Chandler finally came on May 11, 2019, at Bellator 221. Freire stopped him by TKO in the first round and became the second fighter in Bellator history, after Ryan Bader, to hold two titles at once. He kept rolling through the featherweight Grand Prix, beating Juan Archuleta, knocking out Pedro Carvalho and putting Emmanuel Sanchez to sleep with a guillotine, before A.J. McKee knocked him down and submitted him in the first round of the final in July 2021.
That October he vacated the lightweight title. He said he didn’t want to stand in the way of Patricky’s run at it. Few people in this sport would hand back a belt they’d won, but he did it for his brother.
He beat McKee in the April 2022 rematch to start a third featherweight reign, then outpointed Ádám Borics and Rizin champion Kleber Koike Erbst. He dropped to bantamweight chasing a belt in a third division and lost a decision to Sergio Pettis, then got knocked out by Chihiro Suzuki in the first round on short notice. In March 2024 he survived a cut against Jeremy Kennedy and finished him in the third round. It was his last Bellator fight. After months of public fighting over inactivity and his contract, PFL released him on Jan. 14, 2025.
He left with the promotion’s records for wins (24), fights (30), finishes (15) and title fights (18), plus nine title defenses. Many people consider him the best fighter Bellator ever had.
Starting over at 37
The UFC signed him on Feb. 19, 2025, and threw him straight at former interim champion Yair Rodríguez at UFC 314 in Miami. He lost a decision. He beat Dan Ige on points at UFC 318. A September 2025 fight with Losene Keita fell apart when Keita weighed in at 149 pounds. Then came the April 11 decision loss to Pico at UFC 327, and on Sept. 19 at UFC 331 he knocked out Choi Doo-ho in the first round. That makes him 2-2 in the Octagon and No. 12 in our featherweight rankings.
Now he wants Murphy. The trouble is Pico, who knocked out the same Keita in 74 seconds at UFC 333 on Oct. 24 and then told Daniel Cormier exactly what he wanted. “If you’re asking me what I want, I want to fight for a title. But if that can’t happen, I want a rematch with Lerone Murphy,” Pico said, before going after the guys he called “rankings squatters.”
Pico has the head-to-head win, and Murphy beat Pico in August 2025, so a rematch fits neatly. Freire has a stronger case on paper than his ranking suggests. He’s knocked out a former Bellator champion’s worth of names, and he’s been the guy who waited his turn before. But the April scorecards at UFC 327 sit between him and Murphy, and Pico reminded everyone of them in Abu Dhabi, right before he caught his flight home.
