Issue 162

December 2017

How Patricky and Patrício Pitbull became Bellator’s best in show.

In a corner of a plush hotel in San Jose, an effervescence emanates from two fighting brothers. Energy bristles from them. One is noisily relating stories, bold and brash, stroking his beard, while his brother, 18 months older, nods and grins repetitively.

These are the Pitbull brothers – aka Patricky and Patrício Freire – and as sibling rivalries go, they have had each other’s backs since they raised themselves to their feet as toddlers in the city of Natal in northeastern Brazil, and started to swing their arms and feet against the world – and even each other.

In a fascinating interview, the Brazilian brothers open up about their bond, their shared approach to fighting and unusual incidents in their lives, including the time their mother shot a man dead in their home when they were children.

Patrício has had two reigns as the Bellator featherweight champion.

He reclaimed the title by defeating Daniel Straus in April, having first secured the crown against Pat Curran three years ago. He is the noisier of the pair, and totally fearless.

Patricky lost in a bid for the Bellator lightweight crown last year, but recent wins over Benson Henderson and Josh Thompson, as well as greater patience allied with his heavy hands, have seen him grow in stature.

His set of highlight-reel knockouts has made him grow as a fan favorite, and his ambition burns brightly to join his younger brother as a champion and create history as the first siblings to concurrently hold two major MMA titles.

The triumph over Henderson in September was “the biggest of my career”, explains the 31-year-old. “Benson’s a great fighter, I have so much respect for him. He has been a champion in the WEC and the UFC. Beating him marked a great moment in my career. Now I want Brent Primus, or whoever I must face to win that title.”

They are called the Pitbulls for a reason. When they fight, they are relentless. When an opponent is announced for them, they simply home in on them.

“I have to fight like a pit bull,” explains Patricky. “Non-stop. I didn’t create this style: it is me, it is my heart. And my brother is the same. When I start the fight, I am explosive. Sometimes I have a long fuse – as a person – but sometimes, that fuse gets short.

“When I have a short fuse, I lose control. But what I’ve learned is that I need to control my aggression at all times. A lot of people have been praising me for the patience I have shown throughout my career.

"Lately, it’s been going perfectly. In the beginning of my career in Bellator, I tried to take the guy’s head off in the first round every time, like when I fought Eddie Alvarez, ‘Cupcake’ (Lloyd Woodard) and ‘Razor’ Rob (McCullough). But that is changing.”

Patrício sits, listens and nods away. They are so close, this pair. And it is tangible sitting with them. They have been sparring partners for each other, cohorts and cornermen, confidants and the tightest of allies. They have an extraordinary fighting friendship brought about by their unbreakable blood ties.

In their early teens they were competitive, and often sparred. After one fall-out, they didn’t speak for a year – even though they were sharing a bedroom.

“We are like the Diaz brothers but more violent,” offers Patrício. Their coach and translator Eric Albarracin reminds me they have been housed by Bellator in different hotels to their opponents in the past during fight week. They can kick off. Badly. They are volatile and emotionally charged, just like pit bulls.

Over an entertaining afternoon, they alternate between laughing and falling silent as they explain many aspects of their lives that made them a unique duo. The most shocking is the incident when they were five and six years old, on a night when their mother, Marlusa, shot a robber in the head in front of them through the open window of their bedroom.

“There were some criminals breaking into our house and Mom killed one of them. Seven guys. Mom found the gun and shot them right in the eye,” explained Patricky, who adds that it has scarred his brother for life.

Patrício takes up the story: “It was two in the morning. Everybody was sleeping. Usually, our father would go to bed early and our mom would stay up late. But on this night, our father was up and our mother was sleeping. Our father woke up our mom when he heard a noise.

"When she woke up and walked in our room, the window was open. At any moment, these robbers could have jumped through that window. Who knows what they were going to do.”

Their father, a policeman, had gestured to their mother to go and get his gun and point it at the window. Meanwhile, their father had gone to the kitchen where he heard several men trying to come through the kitchen door. “Our father protected the kitchen door. There were five or six of them. He checked that out and left Mom pointing the gun out the window where we were. "We had some cousins living there, but he grabbed them and put them in the main bedroom and told them to hide underneath the bed.”

But Patrício was petrified and stayed on his bed in a state of shock, with his eyes open. He didn’t move. As one of the perpetrators appeared at the boys’ bedroom window, their mother fired.

“She had seen his head at the window and fired. My father didn’t believe she’d hit him at first because it was so dark. But she’d hit him right through the eye,” explains Patricky.

Petrified, Patrício had witnessed it all. “I was five years old and I said I wanted to see (the dead man). Dad said, ‘You want to see who she killed? Come on, I’ll show you.’ He showed me the guy. He was on the ground right outside the window. I wasn’t scared anymore. My dad is my hero and he was right by my side.”

But it has meant that Patrício, even at 30 years old, finds it difficult to sleep alone in a bedroom, as his fears come alive in the dark. He explains: “That’s why I can’t sleep at night. The trauma stayed with me. I see things.”

To this day, even though Patricky is married with children, the two men live in the same house. “When I had my first baby, we lived in the same house and I was still sleeping in the same room as Patrício,” he explained. “Now my brother sleeps in the baby’s room.”

Looking back on their childhood, they explain they seemed destined to be fighters, growing up in Natal. Fighting chose them, they intern. “I don’t remember how we first knew we would have a career as fighters, because ever since we were infants, me and my brother were fighting perhaps 10 times a day,” explains the younger sibling. “We got in a lot of fights. Every day. At school, at college and at home.

“For us it was normal. Everything ended in a fight. But obviously, not today, not anymore. But there was a time when, if my dad gave us two cups of juice and there was one-ounce difference, we’d fight over it. If he bought us shorts with different colors and one of us liked the other color, we’d fight.”

When they were 10 and 11 respectively, they started jiu-jitsu. Their fighting became even more intense, and now it was trained. “We then saw that we could just be competitive with each other. Every day I’d beat him in training, then he’d beat me in training,” says Patrício.

Patricky adds, “After practice, we’d stay on the mat and call other partners to come and train with us. We were the last ones to leave. We wanted everybody to stay for more after the 90-minute practice. We did it all day. There wasn’t too much downtime in between fights.

“We’d fight, make up, fight, make up. Even if we’d just finished fighting, and they were playing soccer and somebody messed with one of us, we’d have a fight. Even if we had a fight and had fallen out, we’d fight for each other.”

As they grew older, the fights between them became more serious, until they had in a battle that resulted in them not talking to each other for a year.

“As we got older, when we were adolescents, the fights between us got more serious. We got stronger, we were learning martial arts techniques. It was getting serious and painful. We had a brawl.”

Patrício adds: “We lived with each other and didn’t talk. We would ask our jiu-jitsu professor to find a way for us to make up. Then, one day during a belt ceremony we got our orange belts at the same time, and he made us put them on each other and give each other a hug. That’s how we made up.”

They don’t spar anymore, because it gets out of control. Patrício explains: “We hurt each other too much in sparring. The last time we sparred was in Rio, and the boxing coach made us stop because we were going too hard, too crazy. The round was over for 10 seconds and we kept punching each other.”

Patrício reckons they get their fiery nature from their mother. “That instinct we get for fighting we get from my mom and her dad. Our father, Lucilio, is calm. He was a firefighter and a cop.

"He fought with criminals. He liked to do bodybuilding. He was like a pentathlete. He could do it all. Shooting, jumping, arm wrestling. My father wanted to be a boxer, but he grew up in a little town and they didn’t have anything available to him.”

It has been some journey for the pair, united by blood and driving each other to a point where they are now both highly successful fighters, and valued by Bellator as no-nonsense, utterly committed crowd-pleasers that can light up any card.

They both agree that they could not have reached the level they are at without the other.

They are also finessing their game, too. Pitbulls on a leash, if you like, only attacking with their vicious bites when the time is right.

Patricky’s victory over Henderson was a composed performance against, on paper at least, his most accomplished opponent to date. A razor-tight decision, but one nonetheless against a former world champion and one of the greatest lightweights to ever compete.

It speaks volumes for his ambition, that he can temper his natural aggressiveness into a honed game plan.

They are deeply proud of each other, and the discipline his brother showed impressed Patrício, the Bellator featherweight champion. “I’m at the top right now. But my brother is coming. He’s going to be champion. I believe that.

“You’re looking at the next lightweight champion in Patricky. We’ve never had it in the history of MMA, two brothers as champions. But we will get there, and without each other, we would not be in this position. We are approaching our prime now as fighters, and nothing is going to deny us.”

Sitting next to him, his ally is grinning and smiling. The tale of two brothers, perhaps one of the most remarkable in all mixed martial arts, and they are only going to get better and better.