By Eric Thomas: 36-year-old former two division world champion Acelino Freitas (38-2, 32 KO’s) will be making a ring return tonight after a five year absence from the ring to take on unbeaten 22-year-old middleweight Michael Oliveira (17-0, 12 KO’s) in a scheduled 10 round bout at the Hotel & Casino Conrad, in Punta del Este, Uruguay.
It’s really difficult to imagine that Freitas will find any success in this fight because he’s been out of the ring for so long, and he looked to be a shot fighter in his last bout five years ago against Juan Diaz. Putting Freitas in with a younger, stronger and bigger fighter like Oliveira is a recipe for disaster.
Freitas held the WBO super featherweight title from 1999 to 2004 before losing it to Diego Corrales in a 10th round TKO loss. Freitas came back three fights later to defeat Zahir Raheem by a very questionable 12 round split decision to capture the vacant WBO lightweight title. However, Freitas lost the title in his next bout to Juan Diaz in an 8th round stoppage.
Freitas will be moving up three divisions to take this fight against Oliveira at junior middleweight, and it’s going to be tough for him unless he’s able to find some of the ability that he had in his best years of his career.
At Friday’s weigh-in, Freitas weighed in at 154.8 LBS. Oliveira weighed in at 152.9 LBS.
This fight has knockout written all over it. I’d be surprised if Freitas is able to make it to the 6th round against Olieveira.
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