By Patrick Kehoe
Photo © Ed Mulholland/FightWireImages.com

Dreams and God understood as fate and the willfulness to challenge the best fighters in a division, how the internal currents within a fighter swirl, coalescing as belief, patterns forming in the mouth, spoken, from what we take to be the heart and mind concurrently. We all need to believe deeply, before action moves us toward ambition, mission.

“… On the 28th, I will win another world title; for the fifth time, I will become a world champion because that's my destiny.  That's what God wants of me and that's how it's going to be. Nothing is going to change it,” Acelino Freitas, WBO lightweight champion says, as if reciting a personal creed.

“I have dreamed about this, it is my dream and I will make it happen. Once again, I will be champion, my fifth world championship title, on the 28th!”  

Translations from Portuguese may vary, but the keywords remain consistent for Brazil’s “Popo” Freitas. He still believes in a mission to conquer – typically the preserve and fixation of audacious youth – even five months shy of his 32nd birthday. Not that 32 is old any longer, but, these are lightweights – he and WBA champion Juan Diaz, the unfashionable youth in this showdown five months shy of 24 – so age may be more than a state of mind, as we explore possibilities.

Unification fights are not unfamiliar ground for Freitas, who managed to turn the trick against Cuban expatriate Joel Casamayor, January 12, 2002 clustering a junior lightweight WBO with the WBA version. In that fight, Freitas converted from knockout searching demon to situational boxer-puncher to defuse the up-tempo Casamayor over the balance of their testy 12 rounds.

And a funny thing happened to Freitas ever after that title unifier with Casamayor. Call it a revelation or call it bowing to a practical approach, a change of heart? The man who had come into the ring with a glistening 30-0 slate, highlighted by 29 knockouts and the commensurate reputation that establishes, decided he needed to become a finesse fighter, more moving stalker and less all out destroyer.

Blessed with natural right hand power and ranging movement, Freitas and his trainer Oscar Suarez announced that the Brazilian Bomber was henceforth going to concentrate on boxing, giving displays of tactful, patient applications and not just exhibitions of hammering assaults. Apparently, the competition was such, it was explained, Freitas must round out his style; versatility would make him a complete pugilist, a champion capable of winning epic fights.

And just when Showtime was about to platform Freitas as their networks lightweight striker extraordinaire: Ronaldo with gloves on. If marketing relies on the transmission of labels into branding ubiquity, Freitas suddenly became a no-name… fresh off his greatest ring accomplishment.

Not yet thirty, the decision wasn’t motivated directly by Father Time’s dictates. Echoes of Arturo Gatti’s intentions to convert from baleful bomber back to his Tracy Patterson proto-typical self sent shockwaves through the rumor mill just as “Popo” was telling the media in Brazil that he was feeling tired training for his championship fights. If he was going to sustain his career Freitas and Suarez convinced themselves “Popo” had to commit to defensive soundness, using movement and setting up moments to register his power shots and not just trying to counter with power round after round. Freitas told the press he couldn’t keep up the pace of that kind of warring, especially given the talent at the top stratum of boxing such as Casamayor and Barrera and Morales, etc.

That “Popo” had effectively renounced the sum and substance of his entire career as a knockout artist, the very predicate of his popularity beyond Brazil, didn’t seem to strike the inner circle of Team Freitas as tantamount to admitting that he was sensing his win over Casamayor was effectively a stay of execution and he’d been exposed as something considerably less than a dominating ring presence.

Unquestionably, his South American celebrity was beginning hound his marriage and his normal comportment as a guy who liked his privacy: fame with conditional access. Freitas described how he, nearing 27, needed more and more down time in between ring encounters. Then the predictable blame game began with talk of his on and off again relationship with promoter Art Pelullo, his diet was called into question, the outdated methods he’d been mentored on and even his soap opera of a marriage began to define him not his ring record. Some boxing insiders felt that the hounding national adulation and cultural celebrity he experienced throughout Brazil was effecting his nervous system, constant media celebrity sapping his energy, absorbing his mental and psychological reserves necessary for the all out athleticism a championship training camp demands of an elite fighter.

Was Acelino Freitas crashing his weight to get ready for his title defenses? Full figured pictures of him strolling along tropical beaches and then heatedly training were subjected to almost forensic analysis, another point of insinuating comparison he had to endure along with the round faced soccer megastar Ronaldo.

And yet, Freitas kept winning, most sensationally against Argentinean wild man Jorge Barrios, having risen twice from knockdowns to administer a jaw dislocating right hand worthy of Roberto Duran with the bell sounding the close of a mesmerizing 11th round. After the interval, Freitas would only require 50 more seconds to complete the victory. Ready at their laptops, boxing scribes were astounded at how Freitas tried to find punching opportunities within fleeting moments for selected power discharges. Why not force feed more into the openings with his speed and power? Had Freitas peeked at 26? Where was the guy who throttled his way to the title just two years before?

Couldn’t Team Freitas see their charge was becoming less intimidating while becoming more and more susceptible to even the clubbing offerings of brutes like Barrios? Another telling question suggested itself for public debate: was Freitas now hopelessly caught in-between styles? He’d often dismissed queries as to his declining hitting power at full lightweight by reminding the press that early in his career he often fought full fledged lightweights. Yet in terms of degree, the subtle variances that tend to define good from great, Freitas’ victories were not meeting expectation, lacking the Homeric arch of prowess and passion reasserting itself.

Next time out, the undefeated record vanished, torn asunder by the telegraphed bombardment of Diego Corrales. Losing to Corrales was editorialized as Freitas having finally been unmasked, his flawed viability revealed. The rewriting of his historical body of work, his career wins, was as ruthless as it was overly defaming.
Certainly, Freitas had won major fights, defended his titles admirably and in general had, at least, put himself out there for several years demanding the attention of other major championship fighters from Naseem Hamed to Erik Morales to Marco Antonio Barrera to Floyd Mayweather and countless lighter weighted title passers bye.

Indeed, the failure to get those fights was at the core with his unsettled relationship with Banner Promotions; without the tidal wave of his early reputation, there was little hope of bridging the Showtime-HBO divide, and the contractual encamping that fighters must endure as the price for major US cable visibility. For a while, few took him up on his challenges. Even his split decision win over the will-o-the-wisp figure of Zahir Raheem, April 2006, brought more critical venting than lauding praise for what amounted to a ring rebirth of the first rank. Hadn’t the great, though fading, Erik Morales faltered amateurishly in his 12 rounds against Raheem? Critically, the fight became more about the quirky adjudication of the rounds – ala the Casamayor fight – than anything to do with Freitas having conquered a formidable opponent.

Dismayed at the inconsequential impact his championship career and once again emotionally exhausted, Freitas announced his retirement on October 4, 2006. No one really believed the statement; still fewer looked forward to what was diffidently viewed as what would be an inevitable return of a former world champion in boxing.

Doubtlessly, all of those early career knockouts, the flaming reminder that extinguished Barrios has proven to be the legacy his career cannot hope to supercede. Freitas the boxer simply cannot compete in the popular mind with the guy who eviscerated opponents, the guy who fought 26 times before being taken into a 9th round. Thus, the feeling of something aborted seems to surround Freitas, even as he’s become statically a continuous success, rich and title strewn, and yet the man who should have been larger than life, should have had that classically senatorial face of his stamped into the psyche of the generation now fading from the penultimate heights of boxing.

We don’t need to be correct in our past projections into the future tense to feel them keenly, having held the talented up to ridiculous standards that not even hindsight can bring into moderation. Yes, early distinction, the expectation burgeoning into hyping hysteria, tends to scar for life.

One fight in 2005 and 2006 makes all of this speculation upon ancient history to do with the life and times and career of Acelino Freitas more than relevant. Mainly, it’s what we have to go on, what detailing he’s allowed for us to make out, as he heads into his lightweight unification bout with the undefeated college man-child Juan Diaz. Then again Freitas will hope that history is indeed circular, that the specters from the past can take living form in the eternally faithful. He may own three gyms in Brazil, but, Freitas has not been pursuing his career with any thing like the diligence of his extreme youth. Call it the natural progression of a life in boxing or the nature of a man only now emerging from the embrace of personal chaos.

Could it be that having fought past Raheem’s blizzard of punches, to gain the slightest of advantages, Freitas believes he’s already engaged a close facsimile to the WBA champion and is willing to bet Diaz cannot say the same? Freitas might well cherish the chance to confound the experts and finally fight thee fight of his life, savagery and savvy all within his command. At least, he’s of the mind he can do just that. Dreaming and praying, his mind’s eye conveys his version of a personal truth, redemption.

Freitas, WBO lightweight champion, almost comes in as “The Contender,” the man on a mission to find out his true worth, the final estimation of his net worth as a champion he’s long been.

Can desperation really be liberating? Being young isn’t a total guarantee; that Freitas knows for sure.

Maybe looking for the simplest answer fits our contemporary culture of the visual, the instantly accelerated, judgments emptying into virtual values and not a lot makes perfect sense.

Could it be that Freitas the boxer, Freitas the banger and Freitas the professional fighter intends to do what ever is necessary, as the moments are unfolding, chopping up the air of the ring’s combat zone geometry? This time, he may sense that only the final result matters and that’s got to be a hard irony for Freitas, but an assuaging one.

Being in the middle of a fight to have the last word might be just what Freitas is looking for, a time to take apart the myths and imaginings blanketing, suffocating him.

And if we never fully comprehend why Freitas sought to fight in a way almost against his nature, his physique and the very foundation of his career, then so much more mysterious becomes the man. He will have had his reasons and we our speculations: period.

Take down Juan Diaz and at at end, he’ll swim in the crowd’s adulation, an ascendant figure taking in the fruits of his labour and the music of rejoicing.

He will have defied the laws of probability, if not nature, and re-created a monster.  

Patrick Kehoe may be reached at pkehoe@telus.net