Patricio “Pitbull” Freire, the Bellator featherweight champion and one of the best 145-pound fighters anywhere in MMA at the moment, underwent surgery Thursday to repair a deviated septum.
The Brazilian is aiming to return to action and defend his belt against Georgi Karakhanyan this November.
The news originally broke in a post from the Instagram account of the training center Freire runs with his brother Patricky, and it was subsequently confirmed in a Friday report from Guilherme Cruz of MMAFighting.com.
Text in the Instagram post noted that Freire has “basically been breathing only through his mouth for more than a year. Surgery was a success and the doctor said he’ll have an enormous improvement.”
According to WebMD, the septum is the area of bone and cartilage that divides the nasal cavity into two halves. It becomes “deviated” when it is misaligned or unbalanced, which in more severe cases can cause difficulty breathing.
The surgical procedure designed to fix the issue typically involves removing the deviated portion of the septum bone or cartilage.
The 28-year-old Freire (24-2) is currently on a seven-fight win streak, including defeating Pat Curran in September to win the title and successfully defending the belt twice, most recently with a second-round knockout of Daniel Weichel in June at Bellator 138.
Freire‘s last loss came by split decision to Curran, who was then the featherweight champion, in January 2013 at Bellator 85. Pitbull was able to avenge that loss and capture the belt when they held the rematch in September. Freire‘s only other professional loss came to Joe Warren in 2010, when Friere was only 22 years old.
Karakhanyan, a former featherweight champ with the World Series of Fighting Promotion, was originally scheduled to face Freire at Bellator 138, but he was forced to step aside after sustaining a knee injury.
The two previously fought in 2011, with Pitbull earning a third-round TKO victory over Karakhanyan.
Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com