Bellator 202 live

The last time Patricio “Pitbull” Freire fought Daniel Weichel, the Brazilian defended his featherweight title with a second-round knockout finish. Will Weichel fare any better in this rematch?
Most definitely. Let’s not forget that Weichel won the first round against Freire. The 33-year-old almost beat Freire at the end of the first round with a big right hand that ended up leaving a welt under Freire’s eye. Sure, the Brazilian was able to mount a comeback and beat him in the second round via knockout, but Weichel was more than in the fight. He just ended up getting clipped. In this sport, one mistake is all it takes to ruin a good head of steam.
Based off their first contest, Weichel seems more than capable of threatening the champion. He already succeeded in executing the blueprint, but it just needs some fine-tuning. In this rematch, the German needs to take a more methodical approach. Weichel needs to keep his distance if he wants to win. He should even deploy his ground game. Freire was able to find some holes in Weichel’s stand-up game and close the distance to land some nasty shots. Weichel cannot let him settle into that groove once more.
Weichel has also trended upward since the pair’s first fight. He’s gone on to post a four-fight winning streak. He isn’t submitting fighters left and right anymore, but it’s still four victories inside the Bellator cage against a group of guys that includes Emmanuel Sanchez and Georgi Karakhanyan. Meanwhile, Freire has struggled, going 2-2 since he last met Weichel at Bellator 138. The Brazilian has suffered losses to Daniel Straus and Benson Henderson. This trends well for Weichel. If the challenger executes as well as he did in the opening stanza of the first fight, then he could come out victorious.
MMAjunkie Radio co-host and MMAjunkie contributor Dan Tom provides an in-depth breakdown of all of Bellator’s top bouts, and today, we look at Bellator 203’s main event between featherweight champion