Patricky Freire and the Birth of a Striker

A fortuitous injury long ago put former Bellator MMA lightweight champion Patricky Freire on a path separate from many of his peers, leading him to stardom as one of MMA’s true knockout artists.

“I don’t know exactly how to explain this, but there’s one thing I remember that I did a lot when I was starting out and wanted to fight vale tudo,” he told Sherdog.com. “I had a knee injury—my ACL. The only thing I could train was boxing, so I hung a punching bag in my garage. I hit that bag pretty much every day. Sometimes, I trained for the sake of training, and sometimes, I did it with a lot of anger because I couldn’t train jiu-jitsu.

“Often, when I was stressed or when I couldn’t train or got injured, I would hit that bag with a lot of aggression, anger and willpower,” Freire added. “That bag was one of my best training partners for some time.”

While “Pitbull” holds the rank of black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, he built a career on his ability to put away opponents on the feet. Freire, 38, has secured 17 of his 25 professional victories—nearly 70%of them—by knockout.

“Striking is actually something that’s more exciting for the fans, but I think the excitement is more for me than for the fans,” he said. “It’s something that I enjoy. It’s something that I find very cool. It’s pretty awesome. It’s my instinct. There’s no way to explain it. It’s something that I love doing. The knockout is something that I feel good about, that I feel happy about, when it happens.”

Freire will seek his first win under the Professional Fighters League banner when he confronts Bruno Miranda in a featured PFL 5 lightweight attraction this Friday at the Jon M. Huntsman Center in Salt Lake City. Miranda enters the cage on the heels of back-to-back losses. The 34-year-old Nova Uniao product last fought in April, when he submitted to a rear-naked choke from Brent Primus.

“Bruno is a guy who has a lot of gaps in his jiu-jitsu game,” Freire said. “His last two defeats showed how fragile he is when it comes to takedowns, when it comes to jiu-jitsu. It’s something I can explore, too. As far as standup, he likes to knock people out. I like it, too. It’s something that matches well with my style. His biggest gaps are in the jiu-jitsu part, but I’m not ruling out a win by striking. It’s going to be a good fight. I’m going to do everything for this fight to end in the first round. It’s going to be very exciting in the first round. If it goes to the second or third round, I’m going to be more measured instead of trying to get a finish.”

Freire finds himself on the outside looking in as it relates to PFL playoff positioning. A second-round technical knockout loss to Clay Collard in his promotional debut at PFL 2 two months ago dealt a significant blow to his hopes.

“It was a fight in which, unfortunately, I wasn’t very well,” Freire said. “I was injured. It’s not something I like to make excuses about, but I wasn’t able to train properly. During the one month I had, I was only able to train for about two weeks and a few days because of a knee problem. I thought that after the fight, I wouldn’t be able to go back to training because of the short time they give. I thought my knee was going to get worse, but luckily, I managed to reduce the pain and inflammation. I’m doing very well. I’m feeling very well. I’m training very well. The injury didn’t get worse. On the contrary, it got better, so I hope that I come back to this fight differently so I can win and that the other fighters [ahead of me] don’t do well. I need them to lose, so I’m going to root against them and do my best to win in the first round.”

Win or lose, Freire wants to remain active for the rest of 2024.

“I’ll give everything I have to make sure this fight ends in the first round,” he said. “If I don’t manage to score my six points, I’ll do all I can to be booked once or twice more this year, either in Bellator or in the PFL. I would love to be on Bellator’s year-end card in Japan.”