Bellator featherweight champion Patricio “Pitbull” Freire is one of the most successful fighters in Bellator history and he will defend the Bellator title on Friday night against Daniel Weichel at Bellator 138.
While Pitbull (23-2) is the only champion on Friday’s card, he will be in the co-main event of the fight card as the main event will be a heavyweight bout between Kimbo Slice and Ken Shamrock.
Since this fight card was announced, there is a portion of the MMA fan base that has labeled Pitbull vs. Weichel as the “peoples main event” or “the real main event.” What goes through the mind of a fighter when fans say he is fighting in the real main event of the fight card?
“When I hear people saying my fight is the real main event, it shows I’m being valued and recognized by the fans and in the end that’s what matters,” Pitbull told The MMA Report through a translator. “The organization preferred not to have me as the main event, but the people are the ones who decide which fight is more important. I’m very thankful for this acknowledgement. In Brazil we have a saying ‘the voice of the people, is the voice of God.'”
With Bellator 138 being a “tent pole” event for the promotion, there has been shoulder programming on Spike TV to promote the event. The first shoulder program premiered last Friday night and was called “Countdown to Kimbo vs. Shamrock.” The show was filmed in St. Louis and featured interviews by Jimmy Smith with Slice, Shamrock, Bobby Lashley, and Michael Chandler.
However, there was no mention of the Pitbull vs. Weichel fight on the show. When asked about not being featured on the Countdown show, Pitbull went into details on how this makes his feel as one of the best fighters in Bellator.
“I don’t know why Bellator and Spike act like this with one of their champions,” Pitbull explained. “Honestly, they lose more with that than me. If you check my numbers, my last event didn’t have a good undercard and yet the average numbers were some of the highest in recent times and that’s because the ratings during my fight were over 1.3 million in a show that wasn’t promoted half as good as it could have been.”
“If we go by fight, mine was the most or second most watched Bellator fight this year. In Brazil, I bring huge numbers. Fox Sports Brazil did a special countdown show for my first title defense, which was their first live Bellator show and they said it couldn’t have been better. For this fight, I was brought into one of the biggest TV shows they have. They flew me all the way from Natal to Sao Paulo for that. Even Fox Sports Mexico contacted me and I participated in one of their TV shows through Skype.”
“I’m the guy that faithfully represents the organization and people know I’m the champion. And then I get to know of things like this and that really offends me. Contractually, they’re not obligated to put me in a higher standard because I’m the champion. It doesn’t matter how many records I break or how much effort I put. They seem to go on the opposite direction and ignore me more and more. But one thing I guarantee: things will not stay this way.”