Acelino Freitas

Acelino Freitas
Data
Birth Name	Acelino Freitas
Weight class	lightweight
nationality	Brazilian
birthday	September 21, 1975
place of birth	Bahia
style	Left delivery
size	1.70 m
Combat Statistics
Struggles	40
Victories	38
Knockout victories	32
Defeats	2

Acelino Freitas , nickname Popó , (born September 21, 1975 in Bahia ) is a former Brazilian boxer .

amateur

Freitas, who came from a poor background, was an amateur Brazilian champion in 1994. He also took part in the Pan American Games in Mar del Plata in 1995 and finished second behind the Cuban Julio González. His record was 78-3.

Professional career

In 1995, Freitas switched to the professional business and defeated his first twenty development opponents prematurely, which brought him a title fight in 1999. He beat the world-class Russian Anatoly Alexandrow on August 7, 1999 in the fight for the WBO super featherweight title in the first round hard knockout. Alexandrow's three defeats to date had only been on points, including against Genaro Hernández, who is listed as the best man in the class in trade magazines.

In a title defense against Barry Jones, Freitas went down. Jones had not had a knockout success up to this point, so Freitas' ability to take was considered doubtful. The US broadcaster Showtime tried to market Freitas as a powerful super featherweight, but its appeal in the US remained low.

On January 12, 2002 he was able to beat another well-known opponent in the unification battle with the unbeaten Olympic champion and WBA title holder Joel Casamayor , this time on points. Floyd Mayweather Jr. , who had defeated HBO Hernández after a one-sided fight in the competition , was still considered the recognized number one in the class. Against Juan Carlos Ramírez and the Argentine Jorge Barrios he had to go to the ground in title fights but still won early.

Then he switched to the lightweight. He knocked the WBO title holder in the class Artur Grigorian down several times in January 2004 and won the title over twelve rounds on points. In the next fight he faced Diego Corrales and suffered his first and so far only professional defeat. He was again down several times and then gave up the fight in the tenth round, which earned him a lot of criticism from the US press.

Since then he has only fought sporadically. On April 29, 2006, he won the now vacant WBO title against Zahir Raheem . On April 28, 2007 it came to the title union fight with Juan Diaz (USA, WBA world champion). After a balanced start he had nothing to counter the forward thrust of his eight years younger opponent. For the eighth lap he did not compete.

Web links

• Acelino Freitas in the BoxRec database